Laurence Fuller brings his Poetic Cinematic Fine Art to MakersPlace for the first time with "Memories of Modernity" a sensorial interpretation of the constant dance between past and present. Following an IRL debut at Nematic Gallery in Carmel, these two artworks of poetry-in-motion, including a collaborative work with actor and filmmaker Vincent D'Onofrio, explore the advent of Modernism in our urban lives.

Produced by top collector, producer and artist champion AnimusLive.

Artist Statement:
The formation of Poetic Cinematic Fine Art represents the symbiosis of all my life’s passions into a single medium of storytelling, which still to this day keeps me awake at night. The search for beauty in language and in art has now been given new life to me. Like a rose that has grown through the winter ice despite all the freezing elements. The flame inside the seed, inextinguishable against all onslaughts through its indomitable force to sustain ~ for the poetic to burst forth into the air, the ice in the garden, on the flower buds, and the soil all melted under its glow.

There have been stories that have been smouldering in my dreams for decades which now may be given life out in the world. The search for beauty unfolding before our eyes and ears. All that is intertwined with my travels and adventures around the world, reimagined in these poetic cinematic fine artworks.

The fact that Vincent D’Onofrio, one of my childhood heroes in the realm of acting and now poetry wishes to join me on my journey was both thoroughly unimaginable and the greatest of validations. 

Vincent recently recounted to me his experience at the Stanley Kubrick exhibit at LACMA, which toured the major museums. As he approached the ‘Full Metal Jacket’ installation he encountered a screen that was playing a clip of himself and Stanley on set rehearsing a scene from the film. At that moment he could not even remember it happening, and yet the cinematic process being pulled apart and laid bare in that museum was both a revelation and a portent.

I’ve always loved films about artists and the art world, which for me was a reality, as the art world was synonymous with my childhood. My late father, the art critic Peter Fuller, was a vibrant and poetic philosopher. He wielded art history like a painter wields a brush or perhaps more like a swordsman wields his blade. He was a notorious and uncompromising debater, with a polemic style that dated back to the Romantic era and had never been seen on television up to that point, with the possible exception of his mentor, John Berger. He found himself caught in the midst of the radical change of the late 60s, in the formation of what we now know as Contemporary Art, when galleries like Flowers and Kasmin were popping up all over London. 

One of his closest friends and peers at the time was David Hockney, whom I serendipitously wound up portraying decades later in the recent HBO series ‘Minx’. Over the years, the two had a brilliant dynamic through their interviews and correspondence. I ended up reading all of them when I worked with the TATE Museum researching the Peter Fuller Archive for the screenplay I wrote about his life called ‘Modern Art’, which went on to win 8 Awards for Best Screenplay. 

The research and development completely opened my mind to all sorts of new ways of looking at the world through the lens of art, politics, philosophy, and history. That all these things could collide into a force that was a cultural movement. 

Peter was searching for the eternal truths which seem to underlie the greatest paintings and sculptures of all time. Where language and art meet. It’s those truths that make life essential and the search for beauty a relentless journey into one’s own inner paradise. 

The good, the true, and the beautiful. 

That’s where I came to identify with the persona of the King Of Paradise. We’re all Kings and Queens of our own inner Paradise. That is something no one can take from us, and it is a garden that grows under the rose pruners of art and poetry. Cultivation of the soul is where we find ourselves again. 

These things are not only trends at the whims of the market. The good, the true, and the beautiful are always trending, because our humanity desires beauty and collective spiritual experiences. 

My own love in life has been cinema and experiencing how all the arts come together. In concept, visual arts, storytelling, performance, and language. I wished to step inside a work of art and live inside paintings. To experience the journey with all my senses. The way the natural world inspired the art and poetry of the Romantics. The idea of clay beneath my fingernails has underpinned my work ethic in the arts.

Also watching my mother, the painter Stephanie Fuller, pursue her life as an artist and finding my first jobs in galleries and auction houses. I curated my first exhibition at the tender age of 18 at Stephanie’s gallery in Australia. It was called ‘500 Years of European Art’ and included prints by Lucian Freud, Goya, Delacroix, Leon Kossof, Kathe Kollwitz, Francis Bacon, et al. The exhibition was a metaphor for my deep love of art history. 

The first film I acted in, I also wrote and produced. Its title is ‘Possession(s)’ and it's about an art collector’s obsession with a particular painting by Peter Booth. He gives up everything in his life to possess it, even as it destroys him in the end. The painting was from my private collection and I ended up selling it at auction along with the release of the film for $100k. 

It was fascinating to watch the intersection of art, commerce, and film. That’s what funded my going to Drama School at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and the early part of my career as an actor as I auditioned and acted in fringe theatre around England. Eventually one of the plays I did called ‘Madness In Valencia’ received a West End transfer to Trafalgar Studios. The critical reception and reviews from the play garnered me some attention in Hollywood and I was cast as a lead actor in the film ‘Apostle Peter & The Last Supper’ opposite Oscar-nominated actor Robert Loggia. I loved LA and stayed here, auditioning for the studios, making independent features like ‘Road To The Well’ and ‘Paint It Red’, and working on my screenplay ‘Modern Art’. 

During this time I decided to undergo a complete renovation of my acting process and break down everything I’d learned previously in England. By studying with some of the leading Method Acting practitioners Ivana Chubbuck, Michael Woolson, and Eric Morris. I found it pushed the boundaries of my imagination and my understanding of emotional triggers which could be better controlled when finding out the secrets of one’s own subconscious. 

I loved playing chess with myself in this regard and discovering the secrets of the great actors, poets, writers, and artists, all through the interpretive art form. It was from working through emotional journaling and character backgrounds that I found a facility for poetic writing. 

After years of working on this, I started to read some back and found that I could actually shape them into prose poetry. As I went on I studied the Romantic Poets very closely and gained a greater appreciation for the classics like Shakespeare, my roots. A feeling for these values of tradition and the search for beauty was being lost in this Megavisual culture where we are bombarded with advertising, billboards, and promotions on social media. There is a deep yearning for eternal truths. So I started putting these elements together by animating paintings and pairing them with spoken word poetry. At first just for the creative development, like a spiritual practice, and occasionally I would post them on social media. 

A few years later in 2021, I discovered web3 and NFTs on clubhouse. This seemed to be the perfect vehicle for the poetic cinematic fine art I had been developing. At that time the medium was unproven so I found it really only possible through collaborations within the web3 ecosystem and utilising the talent pools of artists, poets, and actors from without the ecosystem as well. 

To this day I’ve collaborated with around 100 artists I met through participating in web3, including; Henrik Uldalen, Tania Rivilis, David Cheifetz, Ruben Fro, Jenni Pasanen, Goldcat, Mwan, and Jeremy Lipking. Many of my collaborators have also come from professional backgrounds in art and cinema from all over the world. And about a dozen I discovered through my personal life, like Johan Andersson and Simaa Jo. 

My solo works were initially animated collages of classic paintings paired with poetry readings, some I wrote, some I took from the classics. From around mid-2021 I started working with AI latent spaces for the visuals of my solo works, as I found it was the best way to animate traditional aesthetics. 

As technology evolved the options for animation techniques really have been limited only by one’s imagination and vision. Other actor poets have joined me in these creations such as Val Kilmer ~ as well as Sarah Fergusson, Duchess Of York. 

Working with Vincent D’Onofrio has been a long time in the making and I initially connected with him on Twitter years ago, posting about his acting, back when my followers were 100% from the film and art worlds. And he responded, at one time he posted about one of my first pieces ‘Garden Of Barnacles’ and I wrote to him asking for a collaboration. 

We’ve been full steam ahead ever since. This most recent series is bound together by the mystery of travel and adventure. A surrender to the universe, in an unspoken bond that will give us clues as to our destination if we look deeply enough into the poetry of life ~ to hear all of life as a poem, to see all of life as a work of art that unfolds. 

Each piece represents a day in a new city, finding one’s own way through the labyrinth of the streets, its history, and its future. Finding through their gardens what it means to know oneself and each other. 

The poetry was written like journals as I stopped by cafes and park benches always with a notepad in my pocket. The people I met like characters in a novel or film. 

All the pieces including the organ grinder collaboration with Vincent are dealing with the advent of Modernism in our urban lives ~ recovering the lost connections to our history. 

The architecture of an old building may have been constructed hundreds of years ago, each ornament made by hand, and yet it stands next to a supermarket or in Times Square. It’s beauty like a secret in plain sight that we attempt to illuminate, like the lens of an eyeglass upon the doorway of beauty. 

Memories that we carry when we travel are made up of where we’ve come from, ancient memories from the ghosts of our ancestors, and memories inherent in the cobblestones and buildings of the places we venture to.