Ron Diorio: Better Days
at the Vail Public Library
2 October 2024 – 1 November 2024
Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art is pleased to present this exhibition of work by New York photographer Ron Diorio. The show, titled Better Days, will be on view at the Vail Public Library from 2 October 2024 through the end of the month. There will be a reception /Zoom artist’s talk in October (date to be determined).
Better Days incorporates six photographs taken in the artist’s hometown of New York City, and abroad. Through the series of intimate scenes, the work exhibits the artist’s trademark “Hopper-esqu” approach to his subject matter. The exhibition emphasizes urban landscapes where figures often remain disconnected and somber. His photos are often melancholic, and even sometimes quietly foreboding. However, if the images sometimes feel melancholy, it’s worth remembering that the title for this show comes from a Bruce Springsteen song. Diorio, a longtime and serious Springsteen fan (by his own estimation he’s seen over 75 of the Boss’s concerts in person), looks to the lyrics of Springsteen’s 1992 anthem, Better Days:
“These are better days, baby
These are better days, it’s true
These are better days, baby
Better days are shining through.”
Diorio uses one of the first PDAs to include a camera – the Sony Clie – which produces images with a super low-res image of .8 megapixels (compared to 8.0 in today’s cell phones). His heavy manipulation of pixels allows figure and color to bleed. This gentle abstraction gives the work’s formal qualities a serene and tranquil impression, and ultimately places his imagery somewhere between nostalgic memory and harsh reality. In the age of digital manipulation Diorio’s artistry resists the literalness of photography and embraces an imaginative vision. He writes, “It is not the decisive moment frozen. It is a more measured purposeful encounter -- the creation of the physical object. This is what I consider to be the ‘art.’ The screen image or the photographic print is the object, the document of my process where the image becomes an image of itself. An event takes place but the viewer doesn’t experience that. They experience the idea of that.”
Diorio’s photographs have been exhibited in galleries in New York and London, and his work has been included in shows at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts and the Center for Photography at Woodstock in New York. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Centre Canadien d’Architecture, in Montreal, among other museums and private collections. Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art has published three monographs on his photography.
This exhibition has been organised by Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art and will be on view at the Vail Public Library, located at 292 West Meadow Drive, Vail CO, from 2-30 October 2024.
Hours are Monday-Thursday, 10 am – 8 pm, and Friday – Sunday, 11 am – 6 pm.
All images © Ron Diorio, 1. See Something, Say Something; 2. Drive by Night; 3. City of Djinns; 4. A Mind of Winter; 5. Back Door Man; 6. Rainy Day