Salvatore Arancio’s work explores beauty and the sublime in nature. He is fascinated by the merging of myth and science, exploring the state of suspension between the real and the fictional through an emphasis on construction and staging. Playing with images, shapes and symbols using found geological illustrations as a starting point, he suggests a sense of human inefficacy against nature, creating juxtapositions that are both beautifully evocative and deeply disquieting.
For his photo-etchings, Arancio scans images from scientific books dating back to the 19th-century. Editing and combining elements from different illustrations and reworking them in Photoshop, Arancio creates his own image and turns it back into an etching. The combination of new technologies with ‘outdated’ techniques creates a new hybrid of communication. The resulting images are bereft of human presence and depict nature in its most extreme manifestations, presenting us with a strange temporality: they could be depicting a distant future or a vision of a remote past. Titles for his etchings, such as Volcano Emitting Rapidly Expanding Gases Containing Millions Of Tons Of Rock Reduced To Powder By The Deflagration, sound scientifically convincing but they are completely made up; Arancio takes elements of existing scientific terminology and puts them back together in different configurations, playing with the inaccessibility of this language.
The acquisition of three works by Arancio are a significant addition to the collection at The Harris, Preston and will play an important role in their contemporary art programme – Harris Inspired – which will display works in and around the building, including non-gallery spaces. Arancio’s print, collage and sculpture will be displayed alongside 18th and 19th century landscapes, sculpture, ceramics, historic books, and an important but underused collection of prints from the 16th century to the present day.
