MFA Alum Phillip Scarpone will be exhibiting sculpture and photographic work at The Cluster Gallery, Brooklyn, NY in Fact or Fiction: The Hand in Photography and Information, curated by Matthew Garrison. The exhibition will be on view October 7 through October 29, 2017.

Fact or Fiction examines interventions in photographic and digital processes with paint, sculpture, and technology. In the digital age, attitudes towards photography are increasingly shifting from a means of expression and verification to one of skepticism and sensory overload. The artists in Fact or Fiction infuse photography and information with meaning and visual force through scratching, marking and dissecting photographs, or completely transforming them into drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Technology is also addressed as a means of disrupting and expanding the understanding of imagery and information through digital manipulation, coding, and the visualization of algorithms with paint and pencil. Moreover, Fact or Fiction brings clarity and humanity to issues that are too often consumed, discarded or overlooked altogether in the daily barrage of information. Susan Sontag points out in her 1977 essay, On Photography, “Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.” The artists of Fact or Fiction take Sontag’s idea a step further by honing in on the power of gesture and disruption in their utilization of images and information as both content and raw material.

Phillip Scarpone received his MFA in Scuplture in 2015 from the Lamar Dodd School of Art and earned his BFA from the University of Delaware in 2010. He has exhibited in Washington, DC; New York, NY; Austin, TX; Philadelphia, PA; Atlanta, GA; and Denver, CO among others.

Scarpone is a recipient of awards and honors including an NEA Established Professional Fellowship in Sculpture through the Delaware Division of the Arts, an Art at the Frontier grant through the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, a Philadelphia Chestnut Hill Public Art grant. Additionally, he was a finalst in the Young Sculptors competition at Miami University, as well as a finalist in the Dave Bown Projects–9th Semiannual Competition. His work has been reviewed by the Philadelphia Weekly Newspaper, The Knight Foundation, Philadelphia Artblog, and Seraphin Gallery Publications. Phillip is represented by Seraphin Gallery; Philadelphia, PA and in 2016 was curated in New York City’s White Columns Gallery Artist Registry. Scarpone currently works and teaches sculpture courses at the School of Art, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.