W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #larrygianettino, #closefriends, #ohbravenewworld

Welcome to the world of Larry Gianettino’s “Close Friends”.  Like Alice in her “Wonderland” or Gulliver on his “Travels," you’ve been beckoned onto a journey where little is big and big little.  Things are different here — enchanted and colorful and a little scary.   

We are giants in a territory curiously populated with these tiny figures, characters who peep back at us from our desktops.  Gianettino brings us close up and gives our little toy tchotchkes the Andy Warhol pop celebrity treatment.

“O brave new world, That has such people in’t” — 

-William Shakespeare, The Tempest, V, 1

These are photographs for everyone.  These pictures have childlike directness that can be terribly provocative to an adult .  They were never intended to be unsettling, but the artist can objectively detach himself from the work and see the dark quality in some of these “Friends”.  Gianettino knows that some people — adults — find his photographs discomfiting.  He is surprised how simple toys can elicit such unexpected responses, triggering odd but powerful reactions.  Removed for the context of childhood, toys convey a multiplicity of memories, and not always good ones.  We remember how fearful we were when we were little.  There were strange monsters lurking under the bed and in the basement.

Gianettino’s “Close Friends” have simple names which identify them: “Fuzzy Rabbit,” “Rex,” “Psychotic Duck."  He searches out the odd friends, not only the familiar — no Barneys here — but also the one-in-one hundred with the peculiar look on its face, the tiny toy that will photograph in a special way.

These are portraits, after all.  Usually the subject will automatically assume the correct pose: straight ahead, a little off-center, or profile. What changes are the backgrounds, psychedelic, vibrant, almost acid, colors from an other-worldly spectrum of light.  The model, often less that an inch high in real life, is blasted with light from two 500-watt quartz bulbs.  That smoky foreground you see may be due to more than a short focal length.

Gianettino uses a 20-years old bellows camera to give himself a range of possibilities, zeroing in on the highlight of an eye and throwing both the background and foreground out of focus, or bridging up the bridge of a nose or a snout, declaring that detail to be the most essential.

Even as a child in New Jersey, surrounded by siblings (full, half, and steps) in a lively neighborhood with cousins and other kids, Gianettino was single-minded and feverishly imaginative.  Wanting to make art in school, insistently handing out the supplies, asking for oil paints instead of other presents, he always considered himself an artist.  Painting proved to be unsatisfactory, not immediate enough; photography was his destiny.

Earlier bodies of work consist of outdoor landscapes and black and white abstractions tank from nature that look more like charcoal drawings than photographs.  Periodically he would refresh himself with what he calls his “cartoon work,” quick and colorful.  One of these portfolios chronicled a toy duck’s travels through America, splashing in a diorama of Ponce de Leon’s “Fountain of Youth.”  It was light, funny, and, yes, rejuvenating.

Speaking of cartoons, a first look at “Close Friends” is like experiencing that “Looney Tunes” moment when Bugs Bunny or Porky Pic burst out at you from the center of the movie screen.  It jolts you, it takes you by surprise, and it delights you.  Bear in mind that when Gianettino’s images are exhibited in museums or galleries, they are enormous Cibachrome prints, as big as 40 by 50 inches, as big as a giant TV.

Larry Gianettino surrounds himself in life and art with intensity, color, and objects.  He likes his “playthings”: CDs laser disks, electronic gadgets, his “pee-wees” (Gianettino’s own close friends) collection.  He is a big man with an artist’s eye peering into a special world, bringing us into it too.  We look through a unique lens, through very special aperture to venture on with these “Close Friends.”  

Note: This adapted from the first piece of writing I ever had published in a book,“Close Friends," Fotofolio (1999).  I also had my first real success as a dealer with this artist, Larry Gianettino. 

© 2021

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