Written Reviews:

2009-2010. New Art International. Book Art Press. Annual Publication. Pages 108-112

"Skin shimmers like bones on the
languid, Eros-drenched figures in
Melissa Fiorentino’s paintings. The
shadows that ripple across her bodies
leave mysterious scars and inscrutable
glyphs. There is stasis and turbid
interiority—mannered poise and
convulsive lust. Eyes sparkle with the wisdom of moonlight and bodies sink
enervated, nearly lifeless, into oceans of
dreams and waves of desperation.

Hence, in the execution of these
manifold dualities—which are all, in
fact, aspects of the contradictory and
complementary motions of sex and
death—the stark opposition of white
against black is Fiorentino’s dominant
method. The draperies of bed sheets
and silky garments meld onto the pale
curvatures and flowing channels of
female nudity. The patterns of light and
diffuse webbing have the energy of an
electrical storm. The black in a shock
of hair is almost fragile. And a black
background has the quality of an
ethereal abyss.