TONY TOSCANI
CALLOUSED HYMNS OF LONELINESS
02.06.2023 — 24.06.2023
LONDON
Carl Kostyál proudly presents ‘Calloused Hymns of Loneliness’, New York-based artist Tony Toscani’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery.
“We naturally have aspirations. It is a ubiquitous tendency. But it requires time and perseverance. A very unappealing combo by today’s standards. For it is much easier and faster for us now to create digital doppelgangers to entertain our fellow followers. Quite often at times through ostentatious behaviour. So what do we do? We tumble through continuous loops of distractions over and over again, like virtual hurricanes from which we snap out of through the call of the real.
And we answer this beckoning call by packing ourselves right back into the cliques and clichés that we so often find unappealing anyway. But we endure the atmosphere because there is certain amount of comfort in conformity. Call it self- deprecating, call it lonely, but it is that very cycle that fuels our melancholic rhythm.”
-Tony Toscani
Toscani’s work takes an intimate look at scenes from everyday life while poetically fusing human logic and spirituality. His figures stylistically recall those of Modern masters such as Pablo Picasso, Ferdinand Léger or even Fernando Botero, their exaggerated, elongated proportions rendering them strange and unfamiliar. Immersed in their interior worlds, Toscani’s characters speak to the underlying deep sense of melancholy and apathy that permeates our private lives, to the inescapability of existential crises.
Tony Toscani (b. 1986, Abingdon, PA) lives and works in New York. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, and a Masters of Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in 2011. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Tarantula’, Stems Gallery, Brussels (2022), ‘Isolation’, Massey Klein Gallery, New York (2021) and ‘Daydreamers’, Massey Klein Gallery, New York (2021). His work has also been included in several group exhibitions, most recently at Volery Gallery, Dubai; Here Arts Center, New York and Knee Pitts Gallery, New York.