The Magic of Mercurio: an Artist at an Exhibition for Giuseppe Mercurio

The Magic of Mercurio: an Artist at an Exhibition for Giuseppe Mercurio

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” the artist reveals candidly from the podium. It is Giuseppe Mercurio’s first retrospective exhibition, curated by Francesca Valente at the Joseph D. Carrier Art Gallery in Toronto. 

We are surrounded by giant, colourful canvases, playful, instinctive, semi-abstract, gestural works; immense palimpsests of splash and scrape and shape and sgraffito, of asemic writing and graffiti and colour fields. The paintings are raw and intuitive. They are both ancient and ultra-contemporary, each one a kind of archeological dig that excavates old cities and cultures, treasures of cuneiform and intaglio, from a surface of the modern city and all of its flash and griffonage and neon signs. 

But the pulse is personal, too; we are wandering through the artist’s emotional landscape and imagination, a person of passion and frenzy, mischievous, driven, and outrageously creative.

Mercurio’s parallel incarnation is that of chef and restauranteur. Almost thirty years ago, he opened Bar Mercurio on Bloor Street near the Royal Ontario Museum. It’s an intimate, rustic space centered around the classic long bar and a bountiful, glittering apothecary of bottles, serving spectacular pizza on sourdough, succulent duck pappardelle, and the best carpaccio in the world: grass-fed, drizzled with the oil of Sicilian olives and bright lemons. 

My initiation into Bar Mercurio was by chance, walking past after a lecture on science at the University of Toronto. It was late on a late summer evening and there was a free space on the patio. My date and I agreed that a glass of Mount Etna wine and a pizza seemed like a perfect nightcap.

Stepping inside to visit the facilities, it was a series of intriguing paintings that stopped me in my tracks. These were bold and marvelous creations, magical mazes of colourful shapes and word fragments. They summoned Hans Hoffman, Gorky, Kline, Klee, De Kooning, Tapies, Twombly, and Basquiat, while wholly original to their maker. And yet, I recognized them as if looking into a mirror. Someone I did not know saw what I saw, was driven by similar aesthetics, a frantic, raw creativity amok with adventurous colour, messy beauty, fragmented dreams, scrawled words, numbers, and cryptic sigils. 

Our art was very different: this artist was much better and more advanced on his path; he worked on larger substrates; we both used acrylic media but  mine used collage liberally and employed fewer drawings. But creatively, I knew that we were kindred spirits.

I inquired as to the provenance of the paintings and was told it was the owner’s work. This was the only invitation I needed to centre Bar Mercurio as the restaurant to which I would return for every special occasion as the next eight years unfolded, feasting on calamari and spaghetti and salads with mixed greens and candied walnut morsels, and sampling my way through a gorgeously curated wine list. For many years before it stopped publishing, I wrote regularly on wine and art pairings and on food lore for Good Food Revolution, with wine, food, art and literature a holy tetrad of my personal and professional passions. Here at Bar Mercurio were all the things I loved most. To this day, we visit for enchanted dining at every anniversary or with guests from out of town. 

Back on that first night, my date returned to the patio after paying the cheque inside, and  said, “Did you see the paintings? The art reminds me of you.”

Perhaps it is gauche to put too much of the spotlight in a story of another artist’s work on one’s self. But the parallels in source, style, aesthetic and inspiration would be a glaring omission if not acknowledged. It was absolutely transformative to encounter the work of an artist who clearly experienced the world and the creative process with a mutual intensity, an artist who speaks in a similar language. I dreamed of seeing dozens of Joe’s paintings, and entering the Joseph D. Carrier gallery for his first retrospective, that dream came true. 
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This exhibition is exquisitely curated by Francesca Valente. The spacious, palatial architecture and two-story showcase allows guests a journey with the paintings, with ample room to encounter each work. Grand, yet intimate. Up close and personal, each painting reveals a masterful medley of rich textures and movement, a buoyant dance of mark-making. You are submerged into joy and revelry, but there is a sardonic undertow, too, an alchemy where tension and anger are released into light. There is, too, poetry, and a spirit of play.

It is often said that the key to unlock the ninety million dollar secrets of Mark Rothko’s works is to enter them physically and encounter them as a form of meditation. Rothko, the abstract expressionist, famously painted large-scale colour fields, simple rectangle blocks of contrasting colours. These consistently sell for tens of millions of dollars and are status symbols for collectors and museums. The secret is to stand in front of them and dissolve into the experience of the colour, to become one with them, if you will. Contemplating them in this way will deliver an emotional confrontation. Rothko himself stated, “I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.” 
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I enjoy the occasional Rothko immersion, but have never quite fallen under their spell. The high stakes commerce obliterates the spirit and simplicity of the contemplative experience that might make sense in its absence.  Still, I am a champion of this technique: entering into art and surrendering to it, meditating on it, and allowing a profound connection, is the best way to experience art. 

It is a technique that proves a revelation with Mercurio’s canvases. It’s as if stepping outside of yourself is the ideal way to step inside of yourself. Communion here takes you into another realm, into the mystery of creativity. There is something essential that happens, that is, something of the essence, a spell where all that is enigmatic, where mystery itself, takes material form and becomes image. 

“By transcending any reference to contingent elements, Mercurio embraces a new realm in which the tangible and intangible become one, the outer and inner worlds appear as an unicum in a mental dimension which incorporates the past and the present simultaneously,” writes Valente in her curatorial statement.

This magic cannot come from instruction. You might say that it can only be liberated. 

It is pure imagination and freedom. The artist must have a conviction of beauty, yet be in profound embrace with a wide and broad definition of such an elusive ideal. They must see beauty everywhere, so that they can show us, while being paradoxically unflinching in the face of terror and darkness, because here, too, is beauty, and some of the truth of the world.

“Why do I paint and what do I paint?” For Mercurio, it is rhetorical question. “These inquiries have haunted me for a very long time and they have been a very tough code to crack. A copious mass of coats have been peeled away to glimpse at this existential matrix.”

The Catalan painter Antoni Tapies has been profoundly influential in my own practice. Tapies saw creation as a ritual act, as a way of participating in and connecting with the consciousness of the universe and time. He loved to include humble materials, emulating the ordinary and overlooked aspects of the world, such as textures in sidewalk pavements or a discarded stick. Mark-making and graffiti to him were symbols and incantations. Repetition and all that is raw and elemental were aspects of, building blocks, of meditation and ways to plug in to the past and future. Attention and intention were spiritual or mystical matters, and being present for experience was the essential work of the artist, the spectator, indeed,  anyone. He was interested most in a deep engagement with the materials he used. 

I have long used recurring symbols in my artwork, and perhaps the simplest of them is the X or the +, recurring motifs for Tapies as well. I see them elsewhere, of course, including in Mercurio’s paintings. The straightforward intersection of two lines has always resonated as deeply meaningful to me, suggestive of signature or being present (“X marks the spot”), of seeing inside something (“X-ray vision”), of lovers coming together (“xoxo”), of standing in for something else (“x+y”), of life (the ancient ankh of Egypt), of intersections and decisions (the crossroads), of declarative and decorative mark-making (graffiti), and of God and man uniting or Christ’s power over death (the Christian cross.)  

This is admittedly a lot to wrench from one humble mark, but there is just as much meaning in a circle, a stripe, a dot of orange, a spiral, a star. Every mark made by an artist participates in a complex, universal, multilayered symbolic code. It is not always a jigsaw puzzle to be meticulously pieced together, or to be deciphered, but rather, experienced on all levels, consciously or unconsciously. As Mercurio stated in his speech at the opening, “Only you, the viewer can complete the story on these canvases.” Images transcend the maker’s intention. They communicate from both the concrete and the liminal. 

Standing in the presence of Mercurio’s art is to be fully here, and fully “there” at once. It is the same sacred experience of entering into a cave of handprints and horse outlines in ochre and animal fat marked there by people who lived thousands of years in the past. An image is one way that we participate in eternity.

By nature, I am sign-seeking and introspective, always linking the individual to the archetypal.  I approach art with whole-hearted openness, expecting to be changed and transported. My appreciation is wildly diverse: I adore the meticulous draftsmanship prowess and rich symbolic language of still-life painting; I am swept away by the beauty and mythology blushing under the pre-Raphaelite’s brush; I love the opulent maximalism of the rococo and the high drama of Latin American colonial religious art. 

Perhaps I am most critical of the art that bears some resemblance to the aesthetics of my own work: I love street art, and yet feel most of it uninspired or driven by a hackneyed desire to shock. I feel that Picasso’s grandiose confidence gave way to spectacular innovation that paved the road for me and my collages, yet his inflated ego deterred him in some ways from growth. He never did master composition and most of his works evoke no emotions at all. (Acknowledging that I’m on thin ice here! Joe expressed to me, “Picasso said that it took him old age to finally pain like a child. I vibrate profoundly with this thought!”) Franz Kline’s sweeping gestures zing with the energy and movement of dance, but Jackson Pollock’s are muddy and too easy to replicate. Jean Michel Basquiat was a genius and the rhythms of his graffiti and pictorial improvisations reflect the fragmented ways that our minds manifest information, identity, and memory. But Julian Schnabel’s efforts at the same are discordant and empty. 

Mercurio’s art shares something with the best of these, all the while resisting labels. “I do not have any favourite artists,” he told me. “I am drawn obviously to the great American abstract artists, but I struggle with anyone in their entirety. I love individual paintings for the momentary idea shared.” In his artist statement, Mercurio says, “I detest the limits of being defined.” 

His art is pure instinct and conjure. Joe is a self-taught painter. In his speech, he states, “I am not a classically trained painter, I have had no formal training…However, I am committed to tirelessly paint.” His mentor was Uno Hoffman, a Swiss-born artist who lived here in Toronto. (I was shamefully not familiar with Hoffman’s artwork until I started cyberstalking Joe’s.) There is a compelling immediacy in self-taught work that I find irresistible: at its best, it embodies that which cannot be taught- freedom, instinct, imagination, ambiguity, rhythm, innovation, experimentation, exploration, expressiveness, nuance, paradox. Indeed, as Joe said to me, “My artistic process must be immediate.” He begins “with a canvas pinned to the wall.” Using acrylic paints and oil sticks, Mercurio starts with an undercoat and builds with brush and paint stick. “Painting is the medium I use to release something that resides inside of me which must be expressed. A cathartic release… painting depicts the inner nuances, emotions, feelings, etc.  As such, they complete their journey and do not remain stuck within!” 

The self-taught artist must draw not from the particular school of thought inherent in his training, but from his own devices and the constellation of personal influences and interests. This is the richest environment for art to flourish. Mercurio’s work is vivid and emotional, thrumming and alive. He is a confident colourist, unafraid of unpredictable juxtapositions. His work pulses with flavours, with conversations, with cultures and cities and a roller-coaster spectrum of emotions. He draws from his Calabrese heritage and Toronto home, from the studio, from his family and the kitchen and his love of bicycling. His educational background in statistics and Italian language make an appearance, too, with layers of ambiguous script and mathematical calculations forming part of the texture of his art.
 
Perhaps those who dine at the divine Bar Mercurio have front row centre insight into Joe’s art. At the helm of this restaurant, Joe is both exacting and freewheeling. Quality is first: only the best ingredients will do. He is an expert curator, bringing together flavours and ambiance that are experiential for his guests. There is a sense of tradition and the hospitality of the old world and family, with Mom on deck for quality control, and the warm and gorgeous Jackie to attend to our every creature comfort. Everything is expansive and generous, and every staff member is unique, contributing in their own way to the culture of the place. It is busy and noisy, yet the atmosphere is relaxed. The food is upscale and immaculate, yet you can come as you are and be comfortable. 

Perhaps Joe’s name holds some clues, too; the fleet-footed Mercury was the messenger of the gods, the Roman god of business, travelers, communication, and mischief. The word “mercurial” draws from this archetypal history and denotes passion, quick-thinking, intelligence, impulsivity, eloquence, and ingenuity. Joe strikes me as creative, clever, witty, intense, hard-working, ambitious, and over the top. He has a rich background of academic, artistic, and entrepreneurial endeavours, but even so, you can tell he is a live wire, operating almost entirely on instinct. 

On top of all that, there is a certain je ne sais quoi here: from my first visit to Bar Mercurio, I felt it was an oasis, an enchanted, inspired place. Everything here can equally apply to the experience of his art. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says. Only, clearly, he does. One foot in the old world, the other in the new and the now, and the rest in a different place entirely. Pure magic.
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Lorette C. Luzajic
 
Visit Mercurio’s exhibition On New Ground until September 29, 2025
Joseph D. Carrier Gallery
901 Lawrence Avenue West, Toronto
 
Artist website:
https://www.studio1mercurio.com/about
 
Visit Bar Mercurio:
270 Bloor Street West, Toronto
https://www.barmercurio.com
 

A Pantomime with a Bugle (Giuseppe Mercurio, 2020)

Joe and Lorette.

The Algorithm in Delirium (Giuseppe Mercurio, 2019)

Pizza of the gods.