Candy Forest (Print)

Nicoletta Ceccoli’s most recent collection of paintings is inspired by the interplay between bitterness and sweetness. Sweets, whether cakes or candy, are universal icons of pleasure and desire and generally regarded as positive, happy things. Ceccoli turns our assumptions on their side by using sweets to highlight the pleasurable aspects of these sugary treats while at the same time showing us the conflict we feel towards our appetites. Her paintings depict dreams of lovely things, but with darkness lurking just behind them, like the dark side of childhood nursery rhymes. In “Eye Candy,” Ceccoli, further develops her world of beauty and darkness through the pleasure we find in sweets. Can one have too much a good thing? Despite the first impression of sweetness and light, upon further reflection, it becomes evident that the masterfully rendered sweets are a metaphor for desires that are not always best fulfilled. Nicoletta Ceccoli is from San Marino and graduated from the Institute of Art in Urbino. Her paintings are beautiful and intriguing, consistently striking a delicate balance between disturbing and enchanting. At first glance, her work masquerades as youthful and innocent but a darker narrative inevitably unfolds. Each painting is rife with symbolism that sparks the Giclée (pronounced "zhee-clay") is a neologism for the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-jet printing. The word "giclée" is derived from the French language word "le gicleur" meaning "nozzle", or more specifically "gicler" meaning "to squirt, spurt, or spray". It was coined in 1991 by Jack Duganne, a printmaker working in the field, to represent any inkjet-based digital print used as fine art. The intent of that name was to distinguish commonly known industrial "Iris proofs" from the type of fine art prints artists were producing on those same types of printers. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the early 1990s but has since come to mean any high quality ink-jet print and is often used in galleries and print shops to denote such prints. Mission Statement | A landmark gallery in SoHo since 1984, AFA (formerly Animazing) began as an exhibition space specializing in conceptual animation art. Over time, we broadened that scope to include works by renowned Illustrators and pop culture commercial artists as well as fine artists. In 2012, in keeping with the momentum of our natural development and growth, we revamped the gallery’s program with new artists, exhibitions and endeavors and renamed it AFA (Animazing Fine Art). At AFA, we are inspired by works that are layered with dark complexity and symbolism, indulging the senses and engaging the emotions. We exhibit paintings, drawings and sculpture created by important established and extraordinary emerging artists – including Tim Burton, Nicoletta Ceccoli, Tom Everhart, Daniel Merriam and Kirk Reinert. Our criterion are masterful technique, wild imagination and edgy subject matter. We strive to represent our artists with savvy and passion in an environment that is enjoyable, informative and accessible.