Heryk Tomassini
There's No Mainland
Mixed media, found objects
Artist Statement:
In my work, I explore the rhetorical emphasis, the complexities and contradictions of the socio-political relationship between Puerto Rico and United States of America. It is seen through a focus on the convergence of the natural, financial, and built environments, in relation to the displacements and transits in cultural history, memory, and migration. I carry this out through a re-interpretive use of symbols, iconography and/or objects that represent the socio-economic layers and arguments of this cultural history of colonial extraction, alliance, and relationality. Among other points on this timeline are some topics I would analyze as ambiguities related to this uneven culture of “exchange.” I look to different approaches, more contexts, and new narratives in order to produce discussions of possible solutions and at the same time problematize the condition of living on the Caribbean Island of Puerto Rico, a territory that is liminal to the United States of America.
My installations incorporate discarded materials as a mode of salvage and juxtaposition. I aim to break the framing of a disempowered island, and instead look to the networks of relationality, as well as the long arc of climate crisis, to channel a new history of representation and exchange.
About the Artist
Heryk Tomassini was born in Santurce in 1974 and grew up in Las Vegas, Cataño and Santa Cruz, Bayamón. He lives and works in both Philadelphia and Puerto Rico. His poor upbringing in Bayamón, a city with a strong contemporary lineage of working-class artists, provided him with a strong foundation. When he was eight years old Tomassini began gathering materials, not as a hoarder, but to make furniture out of necessity. He obtained an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania where he was awarded the Scholarship for Diversity. He studied architecture at ARQPOLI, Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, which could explain his care for precision and clean lines even though the discarded materials he uses could easily result in “Clusterfuck Aesthetics” in other artists’ hands. His work won the Award of Excellence in the Dave Bown Projects 9th Semiannual Competition. He was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center (March 2015) and his work was published at the Studio Visit Magazine Volume 21, among others. Exhibitions include The Bronx Museum in New York as part of the 4th Biennale, the David Nolan Gallery in Chelsea New York, and the Art Museum in Caguas, PR. In 2002 Tomassini participated in the international event, PR 02’ [En ruta], in collaboration with the Finnish architectural firm Casagrande & Rintala, organized by M+M Projects.