Priska Juschka, Director Lichtundfire, New York City, October, 2025
Canadian artist Anthony Tremmaglia’s most recent work, Passenger (2025), is a
synonym for both the process and the result of his artistic practice. The title describes
quite accurately how Tremmaglia works: from the conception to the concept, an original
hand rendering of the composition, to the actual finished painting, and considering how
he achieves getting the painting to its 'destination’.
From early on, Tremmaglia’s work was both conceptually and visually rooted in
observing and drawing nature. Being and working with his father, a carpenter, architect,
and mentor, provided ample experience and influence to study natural materials and
organic forms. Tremmaglia’s work still references and echoes organic matter: his
medium, charcoal and acrylic on wood, combines the ancient with the current. The
‘passenger’ here is synonymous with the passage of time. His visually hybrid works
expand the medium, drawing and painting, giving attention to organic shapes while
seemingly evoking physical forms and elements of nature, reminiscent of plants, stones,
wood, and their skin tones, fiber, marbling, and structure.
Even though Tremmaglia’s use of specific organic elements, and what they might
represent and may trigger, is intentional, his visual language offers an open-ended
discourse that allows for individual interpretation and remains entirely in the sphere of
abstraction. In the process, Tremmaglia’s paintings ‘evolve’ toward their destination- conveying the
hand of the artist, the time that it took to render their compositions, and the final layering
of paint on their surfaces. The viewer, however, can still see the path of the journey- the
soft charcoal edges, the use of acrylic paint, both for flat surfaces and to render and
‘draw’ with the brush. His compositions are complex multi-spatial arrangements, as if
floating, apparently weaving in and out of the depth of a background, or perhaps
multiple backgrounds, and into a foreground that wants to expand into the air,
seemingly emanating into space, between the viewer and the depicted.
The question arises- what if the roles could be reversed here, and the artist were
actually the ‘passenger’ during the journey of the drawing’s metamorphosis into the final
painting, instead of the driving force; and the painting the vehicle that actively gets him,
and ultimately, us, the viewer there..
A passage defined as a way, path, or channel for movement, Tremmaglia’s work
channels exactly these sensory and nearly immersive motoric sensations extended from
and through the artist to the viewer- enabling what is also describedas the act or
process of moving or passing from one place, condition, or stage to another.