Collection: Tal Placido | Actor Agent Author

September 12 to October 12
Opening Reception: September 12 from 6 to 9pm

Actor Agent Author is a solo exhibition of paintings by Central New York-based multidisciplinary artist Tal Placido. A compelling exploration of narrative identity, Actor Agent Author is a concept pioneered by personality scientist Dr. Dan P. McAdams that theorizes our personalities unfold across three layers: the social actor, which is about our visible traits; the motivated agent, which involves our goals and values; and the autobiographical author, which is how we stitch our life experiences into stories. Narrative identity is an internalized and evolving story of the self that explains how we came to be who we are and who we are becoming. For the past six years, Tal Placido has been deeply inspired by this theory, which suggests that we are both the historians and the authors of our lives. This body of work serves as an ode to the life stories we craft to make sense of our experiences and the powerful role these narratives play in shaping our identities.

This collection by Tal Placido challenges the fine line between self-understanding and self-importance, as she navigates the tension between the centrality of the ego in narrative identity and the humility required in her artistic process. Her large-scale abstract paintings, primarily executed on vintage and antique textile canvases, recast her internal dialogue into visual form through intuitive mark-making and repeated gestures. The artist employs a combination of acrylic paint, graphite, and oil sticks, worked onto surfaces such as antique tablecloths, to create compositions guided by the textures and histories embedded in these materials.