Artist John Avelluto is back at Stand4 Gallery for his third solo show, Impasta Handbags, opening October 14th. Avelluto’s work engages his background as an Italian American and native Brooklynite. Through the lens of painting, this engagement examines the tropes, both linguistic and visual, of the artist’s identities. Reflecting on the qualities of the acrylic medium, Avelluto explores the material’s pictorial and sculptural plasticity. Shifts in language occur through displaced imagery, or as certain images rub up against diverse cultural entities and art historical precedents. Avelluto plays with, undermines, and confounds Italian American cultural stereotypes and touchstones, toying with the existing linguistic and visual repertoire of vernacular references that aren’t regularly examined in painting. As curator Paul D’Agostino notes in his exhibition essay, “Impasta Handbags is Avelluto’s thorough, vastly engaging upping of the ante in terms of material mastery, visual trickery, linguistic cleverness, cultural commentary, and layered, embedded punnery.”