Zaffiro is the gem, Facet is the form of cutting. The artist evokes the blue colouring, preciousness and brilliance of the sapphire, and the perplexing spatiality and complex faces of the cut. These paintings on paper share with Tabacco’s other abstract geometric works the use of invented aggregate forms, sparse yet complex. Asymmetrical, luminous, they play with edge and depth, as if we gaze into the illusory depths of a cut stone. The use of pure mineral pigments enables the exceptional depth of colour and the material presence discernible in these works.
[i] J. Elkins, Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? Routledge, New York & London, 1999, p 16.
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