Skidmore Contemporary Art
presents
TR COLLETTA:
As Time Goes By
TR Colletta in his studio.
Join Us For
TR Colletta: As Time Goes By
OPENING RECEPTION
6pm Thursday November 6
The exhibition continues through
December 30, 2025
Skidmore Contemporary Art
326 N Coast Hwy
Laguna Beach, CA
TR Colletta is a San Francisco‑based painter celebrated for his transfixing images of iconic objects of 20th-century American design, which are magnified to a monumental scale, and commandingly realized in oil on linen. Colletta bypasses sentimental reflection. His canvases are time machines delivering a collectively appreciated poetic punch of cultural deja vu.
His gadgets are carefully curated from the pre-electronic age. With nuanced titles Colletta directs us toward a compassionate form of realism such as Disconnected, and Chapter 2: From Black and White to Color, as well as Chapter Nine: This Is Only Temporary.
Colletta's approach is intrinsically subtle. With Punch Clock he presents a physical time-tracking machine. Whereas Profit astutely alludes to manufacturing and consuming freedom from fear.
Like his forbears Morandi and Hopper, he embraces stillness. To draw us in Colletta doesn’t scream. Instead, he waits. And "when recognition occurs, the result is mutual gratitude.”
PREVIEW THE SHOW
TR Colletta
As Time Goes By, 2025
Oil on Linen, 50"x 50"
This vibrant painting captures a top-down view of a vintage turntable, rendered with enchanting attention to light, shadow, and surface, Colletta illuminates the player’s sculptural presence. The record's famous lyrics recall the song from "Casablanca" urging us to remember "the world will always welcome lovers" as time goes by.
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TR Colletta
Disconnected, 2019
Oil on Linen, 50" x 50"
A meditative study of a mid-century rotary telephone, rendered with TR Colletta’s signature clarity and reverence for industrial design. The cordless handset, resting off-cradle, introduces the tension of an interrupted conversation or an anticipated ring.
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TR Colletta
Punch Clock, 2002
Oil on linen, 52" x 48"
Executed with TR Colletta’s signature clarity and affection for mechanical form: rich wood tones and brass details evoke early industrial craftsmanship. The composition's symmetry and precision suggest a reverence for the mechanics of labor, timekeeping, and human order while questioning the rigidity of the systems it once enforced.
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TR Colletta
Chapter 2 - From Black and White to Color
Oil on linen, 2018
A Remington Portable typewriter rendered in luminous detail, its keys and mechanics gleaming with golden highlights. The typed page carries a phrase that signals a conceptual bridge, perhaps, between memory and imagination, or a narrative transition from a monochrome past to a more vivid future.
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TR Colletta
Profit, 2005
Oil on canvas, 60" x 48"
TR Colletta renders the surface with a painterly softness that contrasts beautifully with the hard-edged metal components beneath the glass. Leaning into its historical and emotional resonance, this painting captures more than just the likeness of a vending machine. It recalls when public trust was captured by mechanical objects.
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TR Colletta
So Good, 2025
Oil on Linen, 54" x 36"
Vivid lighting and precise detail turn this humble snack into a glowing icon of joy. As with many of TR Colletta’s works, So Good honors the design and spirit of everyday things, infusing them with emotional resonance and cultural memory. Elevated with humor and reverence, it’s Americana at its most affectionate and visually compelling.
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TR Colletta
Bell System, 2014
Oil on linen, 38" x 50"
This painting offers an affectionate and intimate view of a bakelite rotary telephone, capturing its form with a sense of reverence that transcends utility. Treated not as obsolete, but as an enduring emblem of presence, ritual, and virtual travel in a time when contact meant picking up a receiver and waiting for a voice on the line.
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TR Colletta
Chapter 11 - Ars Longa, Vita Brevis, 2025
Oil on linen, 50" x 50"
Boldly rendered in a vibrant, fire-engine red, this machine radiates presence and personality. The typewritten page carries the lines Chapter 11 and Ars longa, vita brevis; Latin for “Art is long, life is short.” Capturing more than nostalgia, Colletta invites us to contemplate the enduring link between hand, machine, and mind.
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TR Colletta
Cold Calculator, 2019
Oil on linen, 50” x 40"
This painting transforms a once-mundane office tool into a striking visual artifact. The name “Remingtayn Rand,” subtly encodes Colletta's commentary on the fallibility of systems we trust to be precise. With its metallic sheens, worn edges, and tactile contrasts the device is a totem of a vanished utilitarian world of tactile, analog tasks.”
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TR Colletta
Chapter 9 - This is Only Temporary, 2025
Oil on Linen, 50" x 50"
More than a still life, this in particular is a meditation embodying the tension between the present and the future. By immortalizing an experience on canvas, Colletta does what artists have always done. He says: "This matters. It deserves to last.”
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TR COLLETTA:
As Time Goes By
Nov 9 through Dec 30, 2025
This body of work intimates that progress doesn’t have to mean disposability. In painting his mechanical devices with such dignified insight, Colletta is not just preserving vintage technology. He’s extending a philosophical invitation: to slow down, to look closely, and to believe that seeing daily life in a more grounded way, a more human way, and a more lasting way might be worth remembering.
To explore other works of contemporary art available at
Skidmore Contemporary Art
please visit us at
Skidmore Contemporary Art
326 N Coast Hwy
Laguna Beach, California 92651
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reach out to
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310-922-5070