JM Rizzi

JM Rizzi’s ceaselessly self-elaborating body of work skips, slides, and glides across surfaces, leaving polished paintings in its wake. The artist’s creations illustrate his own stream of consciousness while striking a profound resonance with viewers. Rizzi came of age in New York City during the transformative 1990s. His creative journey sprouted from the Lower East Side’s grittier days with a looping trail of spray paint that caught a life of its own and never looked back. The artist’s practice transcends the subcultures that nourished his creatively formative years. His paintings ask questions only to answer them moments later—an animated conversation between positive and negative space facilitated by rhythm.

Spontaneity serves as his greatest tool for exploration. Through trial and error, he chips away at the mundane, mining for light bulb moments. Rizzi began to experiment when he started studying at SVA, combining graffiti’s ethos with an ever-expanding oeuvre of artistic inspirations culled out of curiosity rather than clout. His greatest inspirations arise from abstract expressionists like Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler, and Cy Twombly, all artists who held spontaneity in high esteem. Their sensibilities bolster Rizzi’s deep belief in the profound value of a moment.

Beyond skateboarding and graffiti, Rizzi also considers nature a powerful inspiration, ironic given his urban origins. Today he lives in Dallas, Texas amongst a landscape that always proves surprising. Birds unexpectedly court in his backyard, where he watches the sunset tinge the shifting clouds to create new gradients and shades. He emulates this spontaneity, driving at a standard beyond human dominion.