Traffic East – Christian Viveros-Faune, Independant Curator – Art critic @The Village Voice NY, NY – 2012
Bill Maggio’s most recent series of paintings, titled “Paint As Presence,” recall the dark landscapes one sees in sleep or the shapes that appear when trying to adjust one’s eyes to the dark. Inspired by On Presence, Ralph Harper’s mystical-existential exploration of the mysteries of the human imaginations, Bill Maggio’s latest paintings evoke the obscure but lingering figure every viewer sees when encountering abstraction. Made material through the magic of paint, that silhouette remains there, hidden in light and revealed in shadow. Painted in layers and in a reduced grisaille palette, Maggio’s textured canvas and wood panels appear, alternately, like the craggy topographies of faces dimly remembered or portals- presences that are strange, somber and ultimately revelatory.
Artvoice – October 25, 2012 by J. Tim Raymond
William C. Maggio is an artist who has his process well in hand. His large works in black and white (acrylic, oil, latex) present an optical field that shimmers with an indistinct depth so that the visual effect reverberates. the striated surface of the work limned in low relief, heavily textured, layered and scared, provides the viewer with both stimulating physical and meditative strata to contemplate.
Artvoice – June 4, 2012 by Jack Foran
In his Poetics, the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s treatise on the origins and nature of drama, he notes that the tragic poet Aeschylus initiated the use of a second actor. It was a crucial event in the creation of the dramatic art form. Before Aeschylus’s innovation, there was one actor and a chorus, which was only a kind of semi-character. An observer, a commentator. (A little like a critic.) The introduction of the second actor enabled real dialogue. It enabled conflict.
Buffalo Bill Board-Christian Viveros-Faune, Independant Curator – Art critic @The Village Voice NY, NY 2012
In 1958, the St. Lawrence Seaway was inaugurated finally making Buffalo’s Erie Canal Obsolete. Buffalo, “the Concrete Atlantis,” once the point of passage for millions of manufactured and raw goods, began a steady decline. Buffalo’s sudden geographical isolation exacerbated a problem of national proportions: the decay and transformation of the American industrial city. Gone were the halcyon days of urban planning, of large, Bauhaus style projects. Construction in most of urban America slowed to a trickle as industry took flight. Buffalo, the Jerusalem of Jeremiah’s lamentations, was left a shell of its former self: empty Frank Llyod Wright structures standing stark, empty, their destiny suddenly unfilled. Time did this to Buffalo.