CD Homes 2008

Alfio Giuffrida made this painting, CD Homes, using blocks of colour – a deep teal grounded by windows of black, blue, and off-white. I get the feeling Giuffrida's showing us the nuts and bolts of construction here; architectural forms abstracted, flattened, floating. I wonder, was he thinking about what it means to build a home? Or what it means to find a home? There's something childlike about it. Like a kit or a set of toy building blocks. The windows don't quite fit in the frames. The surfaces aren't smooth. There's this lovely tension between the flat picture plane and the illusion of depth. That one brushstroke of lime green feels like a burst of optimism. The red of the window frame gives me a feeling of warmth. Giuffrida is in conversation with other artists like him, those who aren't afraid to play, to question, to build worlds of their own. It reminds us that painting is a way of thinking, of feeling, and that there’s always more than one way to see the world.