TORN PORN

RE: TORN PORN, a series of acrylic paintings, lithography and relief prints.

 Jack Cassady’s “Torn Porn”, is about the female figure l’natural, color, texture, juxtaposition, political correctness, and the emotional response through physical gesture and suggestion.

The concept for this series originated in 1987.  This series followed the L’Natural series, Jack’s first investigation into painting of the female nude.  The artist is always open to new ideas and also believes in fate & chance, this is the way the Torn Porn series came about.  One windy day Jack was walking over to his friend’s studio thinking of what to paint next, when a piece of paper blew up against his leg. He looked down and saw a torn photograph of a nude female looking up at him, after having picked up the photo Jack scanned the area and noticed a skin magazine had been ripped apart in who knows what gesture of anti- eroticism.  It was blowing all over the place so the artist ran around picking up all the pieces he could find.  Maybe it was the day, bill C-54 (a law on censorship which was causing a lot of waves in the artist community), or a mid-life crisis, but matching and restoring these anonymous, forlorn, limbs, bums, breasts, and faces seemed peculiarly appealing. Hence the Torn Series.

There are sixteen large paintings in this series.  The figures are life size or larger and are painted with a number of transparent glazes of luminescent color giving the elusion of depth, the back ground of the torn photo varies from famous paintings to Man Ray’s studio, to landscape.  The area beside the photo is either an abstraction or a news clip from the personals or a crossword puzzle.

Madonna and Clara (large lithographic prints) have been exhibited in Europe, USA and Canada; The Barcelona Suite (mini relief prints) has been exhibited in Europe, Asia, USA and Canada.  The paintings have been exhibited in Toronto.  A number of the paintings and prints are in private collections.