Cartographic Impropriety: A Painting Exhibition by Joseph Favino

Joseph Favino: Cartographic Impropriety — Acrylic Paintings that Unmap the World

There are places we recognize instantly on a map, and places we know only from memory, story, or imagination. In Cartographic Impropriety: Geography Art Without Scale, Joseph Favino pulls those places apart, reassembles them, and breathes new life into their forms. A trained cartographer who long ago traded strict precision for artistic intuition, Favino paints the Earth as if it were dreaming of itself. Every coastline, island, and continental fragment becomes an organism—emotional, luminous, and unexpectedly alive.

Across fifteen acrylic paintings on canvas, familiar geographies detach from their practical purpose and slip into poetic abstraction. Shark Bay glows like a living bloom, its pale turquoise center swirling outward into petal-like formations edged in rose and teal. Kazakhstan bursts forward in radiant red, orange, and blue, erupting against a field of textured silver-gray brushwork that feels like wind, steel, or shifting cloud shadow. In Hokkaido Camillia, a striking red core radiates through ringed contours and branching strokes that blur the line between floral anatomy and topographic delineation.

Other works fragment their subjects into drifting shapes: Korea Pieces scatters soft pink and peach landforms across a cool blue ground, while West Virginia Pieces converts jagged boundaries into lightning-like contours pulsing with layered gradients of lavender, gray, and sea green. In Texas Two Step, a brilliant channel of blue and magenta weaves through metallic terrain, its neon edge glowing as though electrically charged.

Favino’s fascination with symmetry, motion, and metamorphosis deepens in works such as Ascension Island Flower, Vietnam, and Bangladesh Pieces, where landmasses expand into spiraling, petal-like radiations. These forms feel part coral, part weather system, part blooming star—each one an act of geographic reinvention. Meanwhile, France and Great Slave Lake lean toward bold graphic clarity, their silhouettes set against energetic monochrome strokes that evoke force, pressure, and the dynamic tension of place.

In Haida Gwaii, shimmering vertical movement sweeps across a delicately textured island shape, as if the land were caught in shifting currents or drifting snow. New Zealand Pieces 2 introduces a crystalline palette of blues, greens, and pinks that fracture and blossom around a central floral form, while The Other Saint Paul Island stretches its terrain through cascading brushwork reminiscent of rain, glacial melt, or windblown sea spray.

Throughout the exhibition, Favino remains true to his cartographic roots, yet unbound by them. He reframes geography not as information but as experience—a pulse of color, an evolving rhythm, a visual heartbeat. Shapes that once defined borders now expand, connect, and unfold into new visual possibilities. In doing so, he reminds us that the Earth is more than an object to be measured; it is a living presence, rich with aesthetic potential.

Cartographic Impropriety: Geography Art Without Scale runs from November 17, 2025, to January 17, 2026. Visit the exhibition at https://www.exhibizone.com/cartographic-impropriety-exhibition to experience these transformed terrains. More about Joseph Favinon’s work and artistic journey can be found on his website http://www.swuti.com and through his Biafarin profile http://www.biafarin.com/artist?name=joseph-favino, where the boundary between mapping and imagination continues to blur.