Many of the paintings and mixed media works of Anthony Miraglia are evocative of a kind of urban decay, with allusions to flaking paint, torn posters, graffiti scrawls, and chips and scratches and indentations, perhaps even the ricochet of stones or bullets.
Miraglia finds beauty in decay as previous layers are revealed. Unexpected shifts in tone and color merge to become something new as the present acknowledges the past and anticipates the future.
And as seductive as that is, what he creates is more than just a formalist’s love of texture and compositional elements. What is arresting is the realization that the peeling back of layers and the decay of the walls that inspire him work as a metaphor.
In the negative sense, that metaphor refers to a deterioration of societal norms and civil discourse. It also works as a reference to the ordinary and inevitable passing of time, to which all must succumb.
Born in 1949 in the Sicilian commune of Militello Rosmarino, Miraglia has an enduring interest in the ephemeral nature of things.
He expands the metaphor to envelope the confluence of the many cultures that invaded and occupied Sicily, beginning with the arrival of the first settlers from Greece in 735 B.C.E. through the time of Italian unification in 1860.
That metaphor also refers to a deterioration of societal norms, civil discourse and the tenets of democracy. The shadows of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Stalin and too many others cast far and wide. Not all of Miraglia’s work leans into the political- much of it is joyous, vibrant and playful- but make no mistake, when he goes there, he does it fearlessly.
Miraglia, with refreshingly blunt candor, notes that those who do not see parallels between what happened in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and under other authoritarian rule and what Americans have endured over the last four years do not understand history.
