ARTIST STATEMENT: Allan Tarantino was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1972. He received an MFA in Computer Art from The School of Visual Arts in NYC (SVA) in 2002. Tarantino describes his artistic practice as a meditation on emptiness. Emptiness in this case is not about nothingness, but rather the profound Buddhist teaching that all phenomena merely lack inherent existence. The undulating curves of Tarantino’s biomorphic forms are informed by natural phenomena such as the human form, gogottes (concretions), and plants. He views his artistic process as distilling essence into bare form. All of Tarantino’s work undergoes a finishing process, during which the material evolves from its raw state to a state of high refinement. To him, that process is a metaphor for one's life and its impermanent nature. One of his favorite materials to work in is limestone, which by its very nature epitomizes the idea of impermanence. It consists of the skeletal remains of marine organisms that were once alive and are now something different altogether. While working primarily in sculpture, Tarantino also works in sound, digital imaging, and ceramics.