Biography
Roberta Restaino’s practice focuses on the impact of technology on the evolutionary process. She investigates what she calls the “disappearing” line between new technological processes and nature. The development of bioengineered organs, tissues, the invention of cyberspace, and the use of algorithms combine to create a virtual space demonstrate how scientific discoveries have become increasingly interconnected within human life. Our subjective perceptions inevitably shape our understanding of life. We are in a certain way changing our evolution.
Roberta Restaino's work can only be approached by accepting art as an open system: protean, powerful, and mutable as it confronts its own disciplinary limitations, new art forms, and modes of thought. When you approach Roberta’s work, the art is not quiet; instead, it is something we encounter, something that forces us to think. Her work helps encourage a theoretical framework of art history that can be anchored in an interpretation of the world that exists indissolubly linked to the complexities and aesthetics of the biological world. By extracting subtleties from the biological world that would otherwise go unnoticed, her innovative exploration of the natural world that engulfs us yields pieces that can be characterized as at once aesthetic and ontological. Her artistic practice as a scientist whose microscopic observations of the natural world lead her to new discoveries and new platforms.
Roberta Restaino is originally from Italy. She earned a BFA in Visual Arts and Design at the Academy of Fine Arts (Accademia di Belle Arti) in Rome and an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Colorado Boulder where she taught Printmaking and Foundations. In Italy and Europe, she worked in Art Museums, at colleges teaching set design and creative workshops. She was a Deputy Director of creative events - Officine Creative. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Art at Greenville Technical College and a member of Contemporary Print Collective.
Restaino’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group shows in Italy, England, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Bulgaria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, South Korea, Africa, and the United States, and is part of permanent collections of UNESCO in Vicenza, Italy, Stara Zagora Art Gallery in Bulgaria, Zuckerman Museum of Art in Georgia, SGC International Archives, Centro de Arte Faro Cabo Mayor in Spain, among other public and private collections.
