Tony Toscani didn’t always see himself as an artist. In fact, he was an aspiring punk rocker at one point before finding his place among the creatives of New York and eventually his own sanctuary in Brooklyn. Once deciding art was his calling, Toscani embraced abstract ideas about portraiture and how he could make this discipline entirely his own. Imposing giants occupy the entirety of his scenes, unbothered by their role as caricatures of the future. Proportions are skewed to fit his narrative about the potential evolution of humans – with our hands and limbs eventually surpassing our heads in order of importance for survival. You won’t need such a large brain if your attention is consumed by a screen, he figures. On the canvas, he relates a certain feeling of weariness or boredom plaguing his generation, as it seems the more things we are given, the less satisfied we are. The figures in his work represent a universal contemporary condition: melancholy. It’s as if we are peeking in on them right after a big sigh. While his subjects stem entirely from his own imagination, the subject matter supports an entire generation, one in which technology is directly and indirectly impacting.