Biography

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It is only recently, in January 2019, that the artist Mazzuolo began his impressive production of wood sculptures and resin canvases.  By bringing to the world a series of unique works, created by exploiting an undeniably innovative medium, Mazzuolo embodies himself as a true pioneer of his art. Since then, he has been engaged in an artistic process in a totally autonomous way. He goes through several trials that give his art its current identity. These trials, or challenges, have definitely influenced his creative process. The intervention of these challenges in the process, both at the level of the ideation and at the level of the completion of the artistic work, has initiated a brilliant communication between the artist and the work. This communication carries the artist's intuition in dialogue with a capricious raw material: resin. Before delving more deeply into the nature of his works and the vagaries of their creation, let's take a closer look at Mazzuolo, the precursor of an original pictorial style. 

Rémi Landry (Mazzuolo) is the second son of a family of four children. He was born in 1983 and grew up in the greater Montreal area. At the beginning of the 2000s, with a strong desire to create, he went to post-secondary studies in cabinet making. During these various more traditional courses, he is introduced to wood carving and learns to work with colors. He then abandons manual production and joins the civil service where he works on the front line in a thousand places in the arts. He is now married and has two young children. At the end of 2018, the desire for creation that had been dormant in him for the last decade is reaffirmed and Mazzuolo emerges with his Arte exclusiva. He creates works that are sometimes figurative, sometimes abstract, in which wood sculpture sometimes meets epoxy resin. His work stands out for its uniqueness, its exclusivity and the injection of a particular vision of lust and chic by incorporating unusual elements into his artworks. 

Determined to give visibility to his artistic work, Mazzuolo decided to represent himself, in the summer of 2019, at the Plains of Abraham Painting Symposium in Quebec City. He became a figure among artists and sold his first paintings there. He witnessed the enthusiasm of the public and professionals in the artistic field. He also met an art judge who described his work as "works in competition" and put him in contact with Mireille Forget, a leading figure in the art world in Quebec and elsewhere. Mireille Forget meets Mazzuolo and concedes the beauty of his work. She guides Mazzuolo and encourages him to participate in an overseas competition at the Abbaye de Fontdouce in France. Mazzuolo submits his work "Cristal pleurotes". The judges were dazzled by his painting, having never seen such use of the medium. Against all expectations, Mazzuolo's painting stands out from the crowd and wins the gold medal in the category "distinct technique". The artist could not have known a more prestigious beginning than to win an international award, just a few months after he returned to the world of visual arts creation. Let's look at Mazzuolo's journey through the making of his canvases and, at the same time, the inherent introspection that emanates from it. Mentioning the use of resin as a medium could already pique the curiosity of some contemplatives. Mazzuolo's works are distinguished by their impressive dimensions (surfaces measuring up to 5 feet by 10 feet). At the idea of using resin as a primary medium (as opposed to paint, for example), the inlaying of precious stones, Swarovsky and 24-carat genuine gold leaf, in turn, enhances Mazzuolo's avant-garde eye. To make his canvases, Mazzuolo makes several experiments with resin, which he pours on a wooden support framed with aluminum. He makes his metal frames by himself and demonstrates a mastery of materials and a versatile talent that frees him from any external recourse in the realization of his work. This frame, which he creates from scratch, thus becomes the receptacle for the resin, previously colored according to the artist's predetermined dosage. Mazzuolo, when thinking about his canvases, planning them, calculates the volumes of material he will use during production. Using a spatula, he orients the levelling of the medium in order to project his vision on the work and create rare chromatic and textural effects. The artist has a short period of time to work the resin before it loses its malleability. The hardening, the cure, lasts several days in all. We then see that the resin proves to be a material that reacts according to the dispersion of the pigments and that to impose an imagined facture on it, the artist must inevitably be himself in reaction during the conception. 

By distancing himself from the initial idea and perfect thought, Mazzuolo manages to make his canvas "grow", to grant it, in the image of himself, a notorious autonomy. The inevitably capricious aspect of the medium, its temporary malleability and the sometimes unexpected chromatic effects presented themselves as an opportunity to learn and improve, to master what is within his reach and to accept what the work gives rise to that which is unpredictable. The work and the artist are constantly adapting to offer the public never before seen works, exclusive to the style it reveals, brilliant works of uniqueness. 

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Artistic approach

 

My creative process is based on a perpetual search for unusual aesthetic effects resulting from the characteristics of my favorite medium, resin. My approach is now engaged in a dialogue between the concrete and the abstract, a dialogue that tends to evoke, in a subtle way, a meaning, a philosophy intrinsically linked to the work. The realization of my works combines my technical know-how and my imagination. I am stimulated by the realization of paintings of large and very large formats where the controlled reflection of light participates in the pictorial style. With ideas in mind, I measure and prepare the volumes of resins and pigments I need to give them life. I then pour the multiple layers of pigmented resin into a frame, a wedge, around a wooden support. Once the resin is poured, before it hardens, I paint with a spatula, creating chromatic and textural effects. After much experimentation, I am able to master the medium and interact with it, while remaining reactive to the here and now of creation. To the superimposition of colored layers, which I level according to my prior visualization, is added the investment of a third dimension. By incorporating wood carvings or inlaying objects (usually real stones and precious metals), I bring elements of my paintings out of the frame and influence the reflection of light. It is the hardening of the resin (the cure) that allows the inlays to literally merge with the artwork.