“FooGayZee”, a phonetic misspelling of “Fugazi” an Italian-American slang word for “fake” that has no established derivation from the Italian language.

FooGayZee is John Avelluto’s second solo exhibition at Stand4. Avelluto’s work engages his background as both an Italian-American and native Brooklynite. This engagement via the lens of painting examines the tropes, both linguistic and visual, of these identities. Reflecting on the qualities of the acrylic medium, Avelluto aims to explore the plasticity of this phenomena. As shifts in language occur during displacement or rubbing up against new cultural entities, as do the possibilities within abstraction of the preceding visual cultures. Drawing from disparate art-historical traditions in tandem with pop-culture references, Avelluto sets out to play with, undermine, and confound Italian-American culture, toying with the existing linguistic and visual repertoire of vernacular references that all too often have gone under-appreciated and unexamined in painting.