* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Tony Orrico is a visual artist, performer, and choreographer.
Penwald Drawings are a series of bilateral drawings in which Orrico explores his body as a measurement tool and inscribes geometries through various movements.
His work has been staged worldwide, attracting attention from prominent collectors and institutions alike. A former member of Trisha Brown Dance Company and Shen Wei Dance Arts, he has performed at Sydney Opera House, Teatro La Fenice, New York State Theater, Théâtre du Palais-Royal, and many others.
Orrico was also among the performers to represent the work of Marina Abramovic during her retrospective at MoMA.
"Play the video on this one. Orrico brings the elements of The Vitruvian Man to life. His Performance/drawings are hypnotizing. There are clear parallels between his and Mathew Barney’s endurance-based drawings and films, though the two artist’s work differ in flavor - Barney, trained as a full contact athlete, shows more strain and violence, and Orrico, trained as a dancer, displays grace over force. I also find it strange to see inner body based imagery, the hemispheres of the brain, or an MRI slice of the torso shadowed in much of his completed work; work that is produced solely through the geometry of the outer body."
"I first saw Tony Orrico's Penwald Drawings at the PULSE Contemporary Art Fair in 2011. His work was on display in the booth across from ours, and I often found myself staring at his complex drawings and reaching an almost meditative state. His use of his body both as a haptic tool and as a way of controlling the scale and eventual form of the work is fascinating. The drawings document a performance while simultaneously highlighting that mark-making, at its most basic, is a material record of movement."