CD Homes 2008

Alfio Giuffrida made this painting, CD Homes, with simple, graphic shapes and a limited palette. It's like he's playing with building blocks, but instead of making a realistic scene, he's giving us a puzzle of forms and colors. I love how Giuffrida embraces flatness. The colors are bold and opaque, laid down in distinct areas with clean edges. Look at that large central form—it’s black and red, like a game of Candy Land, but is it a building? A face? The windows are like eyes, but they’re filled with a pale yellow light. The textures are smooth, and there are no visible brushstrokes, as if he's trying to hide the hand that made it. This work feels like a dialogue with painters like Stuart Davis, who also used bold colors and geometric shapes to create lively, abstract compositions. Giuffrida invites us to see the world not as it is, but as a collection of shapes, colors, and possibilities, and it’s up to us to decide what they mean.