Mixed Greens is pleased to present their first solo exhibition of Miami-based artist A.A. Rucci entitled The Temple in the Trembling Prairie.

In his paintings, Rucci reduces an entire performative act into a single image. A staged reality results from a complex documentary-style methodology that combines performance, digital drawings and traditional painting. Rucci seeks to offer the viewer the complexity and emotion of the epic without having to experience a time-based medium such as video or performance.

Rucci’s small-scale figures on a relatively large expanse of ground encourage viewer intimacy. His figures are rendered headless to allow the viewer to engage in the narrative and complete the character, not in an attempt to decapitate or diminish.

The main character in Rucci’s paintings is a woman named Nicola—a female protagonist and center of his painted universe. Stunning, flirtatious and forever young, Nicola constructs all actions and reactions for her self-amusement and gratification. Nicola is a stand-in for that part in each of us that seeks immediate gratification and narcissistic fulfillment. She, like us, can remember specifics about emotional conditions and possibly what someone was wearing, but architectural or background elements are reduced to prop-like signifiers. In Nicola’s world, lighting is consistent and undramatic …in memory there are no shadows.

A.A. Rucci has had several solo exhibitions internationally, most recently with AR Contemporary in Milan (2005). He has also shown with Ambrosino Gallery in Miami, FL. Recent group venues include USF Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa, FL, Florida Atlantic University Ritter Art Gallery in Boca Raton, FL and White Box in New York City.


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