Lorenzo Amos, born April 18, 2002 in New York City, is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in New York. In an effort to capture the life of his surroundings Lorenzo Amos went back to paper sketches in search of a new way to paint figuratively, a way to trap the truth found in fleeting appearances. Lorenzo’s works reflect the idea of new American icons, passerby on the street, dreams and memories are a perfect example of this newfound immediacy, “drawing what I’m lookin’ at”.
To do so he engages directly with the masters of figurative expressionism, and with Symbolist painters and poets like Redon and Rimbaud. Architecture still plays an important part in Lorenzo’s work, referencing the Italian masters of perspectival drawing and also, in a more personal way, the professional practice of his father. New York’s presence is evident in his work, not only a city that has become for Lorenzo the perfect working space but also an emotional Asylum, allowing him to reconnect with his hometown, the city that cradled him, after years of living in Milan.
Engaging with the past doesn’t mean that one should simply repeat it, but instead study their work and apply their lessons while still fully painting in a contemporary setting . This also means not to follow one straight path, but allowing yourself to be pulled in all directions, looking and stealing from everything, copying both from Vasari and from fashion magazines.
Most of his new work is a bout the body, what the body wants, the way in which the body is painted shows what it wants, how it needs to shape itself to appear as what it is. The body bears a strong connection to clothing, also very important in Lorenzo’s imaginary, where clothes are a medieval armor of meaning, protecting and forming the body at the same time.
The architectural space swell is in direct connection to the body, always painted afterwards but already-inscribed in it. There is nothing obscure, nothing hidden his work, what is at stake is not some deeper meaning but the immediacy of sensation, an image so charged it sends a shock directly to your nervous system, just like a pair of red heels.