John Torreano USA, b. 1941

John Torreano (b. 1941, Michigan) is an American artist, best known for utilizing faceted gems in a variety of mediums and methods to create a "movement-oriented perception" with his works. He developed his recognizable language with other post-minimalist artists such as Lynda Benglis, Ron Gorchov and Elisabeth Murray. With his nontraditional use of materials, such as acrylic gems and wood columns, he has challenged the dogmatic intransigency of Minimalism characterized by straight lines, cubes and monochromatic colors by emphasizing the oxymoronic relationship between material and visual perception. 

He grow up in a large Catholic family and he has referenced how his use of gems may have been influenced by early experiences as an altar boy. He found solace in the quiet intimacy of the church while serving early morning Mass. The ritual of lighting candles and monitoring banks of vigil lights may have set him up to respond to the reflective and refractive nature of gems later in his life as an artist. In a more expanded sense, Catholic concepts, the universal, contributed to his interest in outer-space and theoretical concepts like the Big Bang theory. This explains his use of shaped canvases and half-round columns as well as his paintings inspired by images of space objects such as stellar constellations and nebulae. Throughout his career, Torreano has investigated the question of value. How do materials such as acrylic gems, plywood, canvas paint, wood columns etc. transcend to an alternate meaning or value? Is this process of making art a contemporaneous version of transubstantiation? He believes artists are equivalent to scientists in their use of theoretical models to gain insight into the physical world and how it is perceived.  For Torreano art works are temporal results of the ongoing research, in the combining of physical material to achieve spiritual/aesthetic ends.