Fragments of a Fractured World: Rhinebeck Artist Franc Palaia’s Urban Walls Echo Today’s Hard Truths

Franc Palaia has spent his life making art in many media. He paints, photographs, sculpts, makes music, curates exhibitions, and paints murals and signs. If it involves creativity, chances are he has done it. 

But these days, Palaia focuses on walls. Not just any walls, but urban walls from cities around the world, full of graffiti, street art, murals, posters, and political messages. He photographs these walls while traveling and then recreates them in his studio in Rhinebeck.

Palaia uses his wall works to make vivid for local audiences his perspective on chilling events around the world. The walls he creates, he says, “are completely simulated. It’s a pretty amazing illusion. Everybody is fooled.” But the messages are real, focusing on authoritarianism, conflicts, and historical or current events. 

Palaia ends up with artworks that look exactly like shards of crumbling city walls. People often think he pulled them straight out of a building, he said. Instead, they are fabricated from scratch. Each might look like it weighs 1,000 pounds, but they are light enough to lift with one hand.

“Each country has its own personality with the imagery on the walls,” Palaia said.

He looks for city walls with layers of meaning. Some have graffiti, others carry political slogans. He has photographed walls in Italy, France, Germany, Cuba, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and across the United States.

Palaia begins each wall piece by printing a large photo of a real wall that inspired him. He attaches it to a thick slab of Styrofoam, then adds paint, gravel, imitation concrete, and other found materials. He builds up the edges so they look cracked and broken, like the wall has been torn straight from a city street.

These works are not just for show, Palaia said. They carry messages about culture, politics, and memory. One of the most controversial pieces in his recent oeuvre is a large sculptural work addressing the war in Gaza. The piece, approximately 8 feet tall, features a massive painted bomb on one side, and on the other a small girl holding a doll.

The work caused a strong reaction during an exhibition at the Garner Arts Center in Garnerville in Rockland County, prompting threats of protest that led the gallery to cancel a scheduled artist talk Palaia was slated to lead. While the piece drew criticism from an Israeli couple, Palaia said that his role as an artist is to reflect, not soften or avoid, what is happening in the world. 

“It only got one negative reaction, but everybody else agreed with the piece,” Palaia said. “So that was encouraging. I felt like I was communicating to the public.”

He described himself as more of a reporter than a commentator in this instance, presenting facts rather than opinions. For most visitors, according to Palaia, the piece was one of the most memorable in the show, not only because of its visual impact but also for the emotional and political questions it raised.

“In a way, it was a compliment to me that my artwork caused a real, strong reaction,” Palaia said. “If your art does that, that means it’s successful.”

Brett De Palma, an artist and curator who lives in Nyack, views Palaia’s political engagement as a defining strength. “Franc has never shied away from politics, and that, for me, is a touchstone,” De Palma said. “Contemporary artists almost have an obligation to address politics, because life is political.”

Palaia’s “dictator series” of portraits stands out as another provocative and politically charged body of work. These are not traditional portraits. Instead of glorifying powerful figures, Palaia deliberately breaks subjects down, both visually and symbolically. 

For this ongoing project, which Palaia began in 1983 with a portrait of China’s Mao Zedong, he chose leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and President Donald Trump. The works appear beaten, with cracked surfaces and bullet holes. The effect is haunting, as if the images have been dug out from a collapsed regime or pulled from the ruins of a toppled monument. 

“Most dictators love to have paintings of themselves hanging all over the country, but mine are kind of the opposite,” Palaia said. “They are not flattering.”  

Several of these pieces were exhibited at the Garner Arts Center last May and June. Reactions to the series have been strong and varied, Palaia said. Some viewers were moved by the political messages, while others, including a Ukrainian visitor at a recent show, questioned the inclusion of certain leaders like Trump. Palaia’s response was that many dictators are elected before they assume full control. Through this series, Palaia continues his mission to create art that reflects current events and to raise questions about what might be.

“Walls are dropcloths of a society,” Palaia said.

Joanna Hess, Director of Art Studio Views, a Labor Day Weekend showcase of area artists at their studios, has known Palaia for over two decades and has worked with him on various local art initiatives. 

“Franc has a unique vision to express his personal stories,” Hess said. “His images are not typical paintings but have the characteristics of frescoes with ancient historical references. Franc has interacted with and improved our community through his art.”

Palaia grew up in New Jersey and now lives in Rhinebeck, which has been home for 12 years. He moved to the Hudson Valley when his wife, who teaches at Vassar College, needed to be closer to work. 

Palaia studied painting, photography, and film, and built a career centered around a range of creative endeavors. He has run art galleries and curated more than 40 group exhibitions, primarily focused on photography and outdoor sculpture. In addition to his work in the visual arts, Palaia has been a television cameraman, producer, and host for various cable stations. For four years, he hosted his own 30-minute interview show, Arts Focus, in Poughkeepsie, where he interviewed artists, curators, politicians, filmmakers, and craftspeople.

He once helped set up props for a Salvador Dalí holographic film and made photo backdrops for Annie Leibovitz, who has a home in Rhinebeck. His 1980s Jon Waine Band even has a CD in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Palaia’s artistic inspirations are as wide-ranging and layered as his artistic practice. From a young age, he was drawn to the figure of Leonardo da Vinci, whose Renaissance spirit of curiosity and mastery across disciplines has been a lifelong inspiration. 

Encouraged by his father to value education, Palaia immersed himself in the Encyclopedia Britannica as a child and frequently encountered Leonardo’s name, sparking a fascination with the idea that one person could excel in so many realms. That early influence shaped Palaia’s path as a multidisciplinary artist. 

Later, as he developed his own voice, he found artistic kinship with the New York collage and pop artist, Robert Rauschenberg, whose bold use of mixed media and nontraditional materials resonated with Palaia’s own approach to combining photography, painting, sculpture, and architecture. 

He also drew inspiration from artists like readymade celebrity Marcel Duchamp and the French conceptual artist, Yves Klein, as well as from music, particularly as a long-time drummer and percussionist. For Palaia, the most powerful influences are those who blur boundaries and take risks, and creators who, like himself, are not confined by one medium or message.

“The world is not boring, so art shouldn’t be boring either,” Palaia said. “Art should reflect what’s going on out in the real world.”

The post Fragments of a Fractured World: Rhinebeck Artist Franc Palaia’s Urban Walls Echo Today’s Hard Truths first appeared on The Daily Catch.