Carlo Fantin was raised in Italy and his mother was devoutly Catholic. His earliest significant exposure to art was through the iconography of religious figures in the Basilica di San Marco in Venice. The way the Virgin Mary and “endless numbers” of saints were venerated in paintings and sculpture was powerful. Eventually Fantin also became fascinated with the parallels between religious worship and contemporary obsessions. So many saints are worshipped in Italy, Fantin say,s and any given worshiper’s predominant preoccupations will lead him to be especially devoted to a particular saint (or vice versa). Within a working analogy of the internet as modern-day religion and social networking as contemporary churchgoing we follow “modern saints” such as blogs and YouTube channels and can find always another Virgin Mary to adore among celebrity Twitter pages. Fantin’s current vein of work iconographic imagery in a “lacework tapestry” of hand-cut paper–not unlike a Basilica’s stained-glass windows–is crafted with a precision and intricacy that evokes obsessive fervor.
Carlo Fantin was born and raised in Italy and moved to the Bay Area in 2007. He has been drawn to various forms of expression from sculpture drawing and painting to furniture and industrial design. Fantin has shown internationally as well as locally. In the Bay Area his work has been seen most recently in San Francisco at 111 Minna Gallery and ArtAttack SF as well as ProArts and Mercury 20 galleries in the East Bay. His work has been written about in media including The Huffington Post and Hi-Fructose Magazine.