Finding Beauty: The Seminal Art of Steven Labadessa

EAST PEORIA — Steven Labadessa is a nationally renown artist from New York, whose selected works are currently being displayed in the Cafe Breve art gallery at ICC. Labadessa currently resides in Ann Arbor, Mich., not far from his job as an adjunct lecturer of art at Eastern Michigan University. He has also taught Missouri Southern State University and University of St. Francis in Fort Wayne, Ind. Additionally, Labadessa has been published in six accredited art magazines, given art lectures from Boston to Tampa, and is a member of the College Art Association. He has exhibited his solo art at schools in Illinois, South Carolina, Ohio, and New York, among others.

Labadessa’s collection, which is various pieces of his from the last ten years, features vivid and intricate paintings and pencil sketches of recurring human beings. Aiming to explore “specific to painting within the confines of self-portraiture that typically runs counter to modern western notions of beauty,” Labadessa depicts very real humans showing very real human emotion, adding expository, vivid details or symbols to the subject.

For instance, in his stand-out piece “Fairy Tale 3,” a woman is seen – recurring in the collection, always naked and always sullen – looking grim and embittered. She wears a mask behind her head to show, perhaps, the two sides of her personality, the longing of wanting to be someone or something else. Perhaps she simply likes wearing masks.

That’s the beauty of Labadessa’s collection; he could not be more explicit with the portrayal of his subjects, and almost can not leave the significance more open- ended. While every piece seems to play on the stated “modern western notions” of what it is to be a beautiful woman, we, the viewers, cannot see the exact purpose, the exact provocation. This very much adds to the piece’s and the collection’s intriguing characteristics.

In “Sever/Moon,” Labadessa again uses a starkly realistic face of a woman, depicted to look like the moon’s surface, craters and imperfections and all. The work lacks no detail, no room for interpretation, and demands the attention and mind of the viewer. It is also impressive in its composition, Labadessa having used color pencil, watercolor, gouache (a sticky type of paint), and acrylic on this one piece. Another beauty of his collection is the sheer talent used to create such demanding photographs, as “Sever/Moon” clearly illustrates.

Labadessa’s art is not something to be missed. It is strikingly beautiful while showing the strikingly dismal. It beckons where it may repulse, and it elicits disgust and joy at the same time. If one could for the first time see the flip side of a subject as Labadessa does, the beauty in each of his individuals and the error in holding them to any sort of standard, then Labadessa will have done nothing short of changing a life with his work.