Artist John Torreano's large, colorful, three-dimensional paintings pack a big punch. There is a familiarity in the artist's forms and materials, albethey unconventional in fine art; acrylic gems, wood spheres, Krylon paint, polyhedrals, and snub nose moldings are employed, often with humor, in an effort reconstruct a formalist vocabulary. Torreano's work confronts the viewer with many of the incongruous and contradictory impulses of contemporary culture and art.

With over thirty works created between 1980 and 2008, this survey illustrates Torreano's ability to express in both two and three dimensions, his superior skills as both a draughtsperson and colorist, and his mastery of techniques in a variety of media. But the potency of Torreano's work stems not only from a conquest of materials and methods, but from powerful content that is at once both earthly and omnipotent. The artist's abstraction is rooted in the world in which we live, addresses the space beyond -- which we struggle to know, and explores what we can only imagine. It is both material and vast, and always universal.

Born in Flint, Michigan (1941) John Torreano attended Flint Junior College where he received his AA in 1961. He received his BFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art (1963), and his MFA from Ohio State University (1967) where he studied perception as it relates to painting with Hoyt L. Sherman and Robert King.

He has lived and worked in New York City since moving there in 1968. Nationally and internationally recognized, his work has been exhibited at many important museums and galleries, including: the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C., and the Indianapolis Museum of Fine Arts. He is the recipient of a Nancy Graves Foundation Grant for Visual Artists, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and individual grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council of the Arts. Some of the galleries that currently represent his work are: Feature Inc., NYC, Susanne Hilberry Gallery, Ferndale MI, and the Jean Albano Gallery, Chicago IL.

In addition to being an artist, Mr. Torreano is a Professor at NYU where he has been teaching since 1992, and is presently Program Director of their MFA in Studio Art. He is also an author with the release of his new book, Drawing by Seeing, Abrams 2007. In addition to object making, Mr.Torreano has given many comedic performances, which also address contemporary culture/art.

For the past 40 years John Torreano has challenged such modernist dogma as essentialism (i.e., the flatness of painting) or the idea of art as a "container" [of ideas], with a concept of meaning based on a "multiplicity of points-of-view" or as he would say; "There are many stars. There are many gods."

Looking Close, Looking Far opens on Friday, May 30, with an opening reception from 5-8PM, which is free and open to the public. The Elaine L. Jacob Gallery is located at 480 W. Hancock (between Cass and Second) in Detroit, on the campus of Wayne State University. Images of the work of John Torreano are available upon request. The artist will deliver an illustrated lecture on Thursday, May 29 at 7PM at Wayne State University's Purdy-Kresge Library Auditorium, 5265 Cass Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202.

Exhibition development and catalogue publication support came from a generous Detroit Program, Arts and Culture General Support Grant from the Kresge Foundation.