‘The fusion of Romanticism and Modernism create what I describe as Romodernism. I am inspired by the fantasy and contrast between two very different eras of art and design. The Romantic era represents the right side of my brain, while the Modern era would be the left side. Together, they create an imaginary lens that I see through to realize my art and design works.

When looking through the Romantic lens, I am softly referencing Baroque, Rococo, Romanticism and Art Nouveau. I seek to express the elaborate, emotional, dramatic, intense, and flowing forms of nature and light. While looking through the Modern lens, I am indirectly channeling the experimentation, personal vision, abstraction and exploration of materials in a new way.

This personal and dual-spirited narrative is something I have crafted and honed for over ten years in my art and design practice. Through my imagined lens, I hope to produce mysteries and fantasies that reveal light, joy, nature, and emotion.

My work would not exist without color. While color may be seen as wild or cautionary, I see color as life. Color is light itself and everything we see is from a spectrum and frequency vibration. Emotional colors wrap, fold and reflect into atmospheric abstraction opening up a liminal dream realm.

I seek to create visual explorations that echo the mysteriousness of life, and I hope to make works that are not synchronized within the traditional canons of time. I look to unfold the wonder, ethereality and magnificence around us, whether through sculpture or painting. The intention behind my works is to create dreamy portals or magical thresholds to another world.’

The 'Eques' series LED light sculptures explore the mystery and wonder of nature.  Inspired by the unique Leafy Sea Dragon (Phycodurus Eques), the sculptures’ buoyant elements are made from air inflated metal ‘plumes’ that create a material metamorphosis whereby metal takes on the appearance of glass.  Offered in a bespoke arrangement of high polished mirror stainless steel, plated 24KT Gold, Rose Gold, and custom painted colors. The works appear to float and defy gravity, while creating abstract reflections within the environment.

Sculptural lighting works have been shown internationally at Design Miami/Basel, Salon Art & Design/NY, Collectible/Brussels as well as PAD Design Art/London.

Original plume designs are exclusively made by Full Blown for DLEUCI.

Exploring the quality of light within a dreamy realm, painting becomes a medium revealing the emotional colors like those found within Color Field Abstraction and Impressionism. Working within a chance versus control approach, paint and color take manifold form in fluid, curvilinear and thread-like brushstrokes. Together, they represent both an individualistic and collective whole similar to an undulating and expansive grassy field, a nest or hive. Swooshing and layered brushstrokes create dynamic and intertwining movements mirroring nature’s cyclical exchanges of energy. Each stroke appears to pull apart bands of light creating a stasis of wonder that interplays with transparency, opacity, and translucency, as well as subtle nuances and bold gestures. The elemental sense of each painting blurs the boundaries of what might be air, earth, light or water. Both the Dream Hives and Dream Fields act as a meditative portal to pull a viewer in for a look closer. With this interaction, there is an invitation to almost travel to imaginary plane while staying tethered to this world…reminding us that all we see, is not all we see. 

'Dream Hives' are cocoon or nest like singularities bundling and holding space for the emphermal nature of light. Silken brush strokes collectively transform into fluttering egg-like silhouettes conveying an essence of burgeoning life, or some buoyant apparition levitating within space. Each work manifests feathery and curvy forms, suggesting a mysterious or unexplained phenomena whereby light folds unto itself acting as both a portal and an entity. The paint and surface create unique color chain reactions behaving like DNA strands, or color codices unique to each painting. Depending on the viewing angle, they take on the appearance of interwoven bundled clouds of light that shift and mutate with light. Created with dual polarity, they can be orniented in two vertical directions.

'Dream Fields' are expansive portals tethered to both color field painting and abstract expressionism in a romantic and ethereal manner. Each work envelops the surface creating a micro-universe of color that dances and flickers. With close inspection, there appear to be landscapes within landscapes creating multidimensional planes. Using signature rhythmic brushstrokes, the fluctuating density and banding of threadlike pattern creates a field of energy expressed solely through color. The removal of pigment is part of the process that reveals different values adding an ethereal layer to each painting. With a strong focus on color and light, each painting reveals what makes up the spectrum of light itself…color.

Color is light, and light is color.

The painting series are created with the intention of revealing the invisible and molecular energy binding us all together while seeking to make the invisible visible.

The paintings vary in size and are made with acrylic paint, mediums and specially prepared canvas, wood panels or Yupo paper

CV

Born 1970, Binghamton, New York. 

Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York

EDUCATION:

1992

BFA - The New School / Parsons School of Design, NYC

EXHIBITIONS:

2024

Color Theory / Salon Design 27 Vestry Street, New York, NY
Sina Dyks, Rosie Li, Kajsa Willner, Dominick Leuci, Darryl Westly, Christina Watka

2023

Anatomy of Light / Galerie Duret 7bis rue des Saints Pères, Paris France
Kean, Johannes Holt Iversen, Dominick Leuci

2022

Light + Space / Galerie Duret 15 rue du Page, Brussels Belgium
Kean, Katrin Fridriks, Dominick Leuci

2021

Time is a UFO / Sweet Lorraine Gallery 183 Lorraine Street, Brooklyn NY
Stephanie Serpick, Amy Weil, Michael B Amendolara, Shira Toren, Karen Mainenti, Viveca Licata, Scott Ferfguson, Brigitta Rubin, Natale Adgnot, Dominick Leuci, Alexa Williams
Curator: Amanda Nedham

2019 - 2021

Pied-a-terre NYC / 32 East 1st Street, New York, NY
Mathieu Lehanneur, Dominick Leuci
Curator: Isabela Rennó Braga

2020

Global Pop-Up Exhibition / www.globalpopupexhibitionnyc.com New York, NY
Dana-Marie Bullock, Dominick Leuci, Kate Tova, Joey Wang
Curator: Joanna Liu

2019

Wrap Around 18 / ARENA at Suite 18, New York, NY
Dominick Leuci, Linda Nagaoka, Angelica Maria Millan Lozano
Curator: Renee Riccardo

PERMANENT COLLECTION:

2023

MGM Resorts Bellagio, Baccarat Room, Las Vegas, Nevada USA
Curator: Clemence Mailly, Kevin Barry Art Advisory

ABOUT DOMINICK LEUCI

Dominick Leuci opened his studio in 2016 with a futuristic look to the past Eras of Romanticism and Modernism with a focus on the quality of light itself.

He works with materials to create a sense of alchemy and to produce new mysteries. Balancing multiple processes, his works become portals to another world. He creates painting and sculptural works including 'Dream Hives' that explore the delicate and ephemeral nature of light. His ‘Eques’ sculptural lighting is inspired by the Leafy Seadragon, or Phycodurus Eques.

Atmospheric color fields in the shape of a 'dream' fold and unfold space. Swooshing fluid acrylic paint is applied in a rhythmic manner suggesting a nest, or hive like form. Fluttering brushstrokes act as synaptic connections transferring electrical pulses from one hemisphere to the other. The organic form also references an egg, and combined with the color genesis of the paint itself, color field abstraction is pushed into a geometric representation of fertility.

Working under a trance like state, both paint and surface exchange energy in which the artist tries to achieve a sublime moment of ‘lift’ by allowing materials to have an expression of their own. Paint and process reveal a dynamic spatial quality from the painting surface that remains exposed. By applying various gestures of hand pressure, the brushstrokes create multiple levels of translucency providing a sense of bouyancy, levitation and incandescence. Color combinations act like DNA sequences that are 'set off' while painting. These create chain reactions of atmospheric abstraction that are romantic odes to the Light and Space Movement.

The ‘Eques’ lighting sculptures are unique works in inspired by the Leafy Seadragon. They are designed to be lit or unlit, with specially integrated LED lighting that makes them ‘disappear’ when turned off. The overall form is intended to create a sense of joy, uplift, and buoyancy. These works are a combination of multiple fabrication techniques that when combined become a new expression of flora and fauna.

Following a scientific current, Dominick believes, ‘What we see, is not all we see.’ His explorations in both art and design create tethers between us and the hidden worlds within Nature and Science. He refers to some of his works as an ‘atmospheric occurrences’ or ‘meditative abstractions’ that offer a sense of contemplation, mystery and wonder within the ethereal world made visible by light...‘ETHEReality.’