'Paint': Michael Angelo Mangino

Mangino’s bodies of color hover on the page as sovereignties, surrounded always by a slight boundary of space, whole to themselves. His manner of mark making often proceeds first with longer lines, which are then filled in carefully and exploratively with shorter marks bringing into the paintings a sense of the slow movement of moss or a vine. Or, they are built as roof thatch; they are the ocean from above, wave going ahead of wave, they are patient, balanced stone walls. They call to mind topography, maybe because they are painted flat and turned as they are worked with shapes fitting carefully into others as meadows to mountains, or buildings to avenues. Though we show them here upright on the wall, they maneuver us to feel ourselves looking down from above. So we hover and float along with his shapes.