Interchange, 2013
Derek Cracco’s work uses collaged ephemera, such as romance novels, fifties pin ups, and men’s health magazines to explore society’s fascination with romance. The imagery challenges the viewer to consider the ideals promoted by these pulp publications, and to compare them with their own lives and their concepts of romantic love.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests romantic love is frivolous, a flight of fancy. Cracco’s visual interrogation of Maslow’s concept allows him the freedom to explore a more playful compositional structure. At the same time, he remains focused on his investigations of masculine and feminine archetypes, and the roles these idealized men and women play within our fantasies. The work draws inspiration from astronomy and particle physics. Star clusters and celestial sky scraps are abstracted to represent the macro view of how society expects relationships to be, while abstractions of particles or atoms represent a more micro
or personal perspective.
Derek Cracco is Associate Professor of printmaking and computer graphics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He received an MFA from Syracuse University in 1999 and a BFA from Louisiana State University in 1996. Cracco has participated in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally, and his work has been purchased by several museums and private collections.
