For more than two decades, artist Joseph La Piana has drawn upon a diversity of scientific and mathematical theories to create an ongoing body of work that foregrounds materiality and process in its exploration of creative and deconstructive forces alike.
Encompassing a multi-media practice which includes paintings and works on paper, to site-specific installations and sculpture, La Piana’s pieces are defined by the sequences and processes — akin to the replication of DNA or the recursion of fractals — applied to their creation.
Drawing from his own archive of existing works, La Piana’s pieces are, in essence, off-spring of earlier works by the artist. Understood as inheritors of prior pieces, La Piana’s creative process has established an on-going creative continuum that links his most recent works to earliest. Each respective body of work — from his “Tension” to his “Photonastic” series — can be viewed as related variants to each other.
La Piana’s works have been included in numerous exhibitions and site-specific installations internationally, including solo-exhibitions at the Robert Miller Gallery (New York) and The Warhol Museum (Pittsburg). His site-specific installations have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2011 as part of the Warhol Museum’s “The Venice Text Project and in 2019 his “Tension Sculpture Installation” were featured along Park Avenue in collaboration with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation and The Fund for Park Avenue.