Tempus Fugit 54 x 32″ mixed media Gallery wrapped, presented in a black floater frame

Tempus Fugit is part of a series of Imaginary Realism collaborations between Nick Cerrato, who has Cerebral Palsy, and Robert Maniscalco, that combine Robert’s visual authority in realism with Nick Cerrato’s abstract expressionist action painting, to create a hybrid form of speculative worlds addressing trauma, interdependence, mobility impairment, survival, power, isolation, environmental precarity, inequality, spiritual longing, and the human need to belong.

Tempus Fugit (Classical Latin pronunciation: [ˈt̪ɛmpʊs̠ ˈfʊɡit̪]) is a Latin phrase, usually translated into English as “time flies.” Tempus Fugit presents elements of fire and ice as depicted in violent flux. The interaction of extreme temperatures results in the instantaneous destruction of both fire and ice. But in that moment when they are consumed, strange images emerge and disappear tempus fugit. Hot and cold, light and dark, good and evil entities and those that exist in between, are released into the world, then seen no more, tempus fugit. But they malinger in our collective memory and explain the most extreme, often disparate conditions humanity can endure, tempus fugit.

What is our process? With only the scantest idea of a plan, a simple sketch, Tempus Fugit launched with the initial throwing down of the paint, assisted by Robert, but executed solely by Nick. The goal here is to harness Nick’s magnificent gift, which is his freedom and spontaneity. These brilliant sweeps of paint and Nick’s expressive mark making is the structure undergirding the entire painting. Nick’s action and reactive painting approach gives him a unique ability to move his ego out of his own way, partly because he has Cerebral Palsy and can only make spontaneous, impulsive marks; unselfconscious marks most abstract expressionists spend their lives trying to make.