Michael Angelo Mangino (b. 2004, lives Pittstown, NJ) paints horizontally on a table, producing works that resonate with bird's-eye-view maps and topographies. He uses a variety of irregular shapes—peninsulas, coastlines, islands—to juxtapose color, but the act of painting itself drives his practice more than representation. Paint becomes his primary subject: hatched brushstrokes fill forms, gestural lines and morse-code-like stutters delineate shapes, dabs congregate and migrate across color fields, and painted perimeters function as picture frames announcing "this is a painting." His jagged expanses resonate with abstract painters like Clyfford Still and Robert Ryman, yet Mangino has evolved independently, reinventing abstraction on his own terms.
Mangino works at Studio Route 29 in Frenchtown, NJ, a progressive studio where artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities create work. He has exhibited solo at SHRINE (New York) and ArtYard (Frenchtown), and in group shows at Beauty Gallery (Frenchtown), Galerie Burster's NADA residency (New York), and Casemore Gallery (San Francisco). The title "The Righteous Gladness" derives from Mangino's text practice: he makes lists of words from word search puzzle books and writes them over abstract paintings on paper.
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