Stefano Arienti. The Asian Shore

With an inexhaustible toolbox of techniques, a devotion to drawing--using commercially printed papers, tracing photographic images, making photocopy transfers, folding, cutting, sewing, drilling, applying silicone, acrylic or spray paint--and an almost-Surrealist knack for collage and uncanny combinations, the Milan-based artist Stefano Arienti has long been in search of new ways to make a mark while experimenting with free-form narrative. Especially suited to book form, the works collected here are juxtaposed lyrically, with lines from one page seemingly disappearing into the book's gutter and reemerging in a new form on the next. This well-considered volume combines earlier work alongside more recent drawings inspired by the archives of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where Arienti made good use of the Oriental collection.