2018 Catalogue Archive

Riffing on both the still life genre and kitschy, mass-produced decor, Stephen D’Onofrio melds the two visual styles in his simplified, and often funny, paintings. For centuries, still lifes depicting skulls, cut flowers, and ripe fruit have acted as memento mori, a Latin phrase that translates to “remember you must die.” In this painting, he covers the skeletal form with a pattern of cheery lemons, marking the transition of the object from a rumination of one’s mortality into an ever-present decorative object. D’Onofrio equates the transience of life to the transience of a cheaply-produced knick-knack.