Client: Celestino Drago

Overview

Drago Centro is an Italian restaurant owned by celebrity chef Celestino Drago in downtown Los Angeles. This latest concept rediscovers local Italian dishes, which are revisited with the aid of modern cooking techniques and inserted into a modern context. The menu is representative of the cultural diversity of Italy. It emphasizes fresh, high quality ingredients reflecting old flavors that have defined Italian cuisine for centuries.

Goals

The goal of the artist was to create a site-specific mural that related to the location and played with perspective as that of the space and its vaulted ceilings. Just like the food, it sparks memory and emotional responses so the artist wanted to create an art piece that incorporated photos of positive, intense life moments that evoke a similar feeling. The play of perspective in the painting reflects the use of distorted perspective that was incorporated into the design of the space.

Process

The artist played with images in photoshop, creating a collage of past and recent photographs from trips to Italy, scans of drawings by the artist during project meetings, and circles drawn by the artist’s daughter which were also scanned and then incorporated into the painting. The entire collage was printed on canvas on stretchers. The mural, with its sketches and photographs, deals with memory - the photographs being reminiscent of an older time.