​​For AQUA Art Miami, Pecorino Gallery presents Evan Morse, Taylor Apostol, Andrew Slezak, and Hillary Irvine, four artists who find shared inspiration from travels in Italy, where layers of art history bring new perspective to modern culture.

Trained in Italy, Evan Morse and Taylor Apostol work primarily in marble, using traditional methods to achieve wholly different results. Their hand-carved sculptures range from human figures to sleekly-designed forms, bringing contemporary approaches to one of history’s most enduring materials. Andrew Slezak paints classic sports cars against abstract fields of color, placing icons of modern luxury and desire within the lineage of painting. Hillary Irvine’s drawings and photography of textures and details pull from classical aesthetics through contemporary observation and image-making. Both artists also create mosaics that draw upon art and architecture, working individually and collaboratively across mosaic, objet d’arte, and painting.

What makes Pecorino’s presentation at AQUA especially exciting is the encounter between these artists. Seen together, their work collapses the distance between the classical and the contemporary. Centuries-old techniques become tools for experimentation and collaboration–transforming tradition into something immediate, unexpected, and new.