Citarella attended the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he learned both traditional darkroom photography and digital techniques on account of the fact that the school was transitioning at the time from for former to the latter.
Work
After graduation, Citarella began collaborating with a collection of artists that concentrated on digital culture and advertising. His ongoing work with Brad Troemel began at this time on the workThe Jogging. The Jogging was begun in 2009 as a Tumblrblog on which thousands of strange images were put up. In 2017, Citarella continued his collaboration with Toemel, working with him on an Etsy art store called Ultra VioletProduction House. As of January 2017, the two had put up seventy-eight works of artfor sale, most of them made of everyday object in a manner that developed a sense of absurdity. For example, a couch covered in hardcore-punk-band patches and a bench built from two Apple computers with a plank of wood were put up for sale. In 2013, Citarella debuted with a series of five chromogenicstill lifes at Higher Pictures. These prints included Body Anointed with Nitroglycerin Awaits Transfiguration, depicting a "reclining nude woman, partially covered in silver, with little flecks of skin and paint floating around her," with some of the nitroglycerin smudging the frame. Andrew Russeth of The Observer describes the work as showing "exacting detail" instilling in viewers a "discomfort ...is also a sign that Mr. Citarella is closely attuned to the intricate traps of image production today." Citarella presented his triptych SWIM A Few Years From Now at that Armory Show. It depict's his vision of a future "anarcho-capitalist" future America. Writing for Artsy, Scott Indrisek notes that the piece displays "a canny blend of analog photography and digital trickery, with many images borrowed from the internet... has the slickness of a dystopian IKEA catalog spread." As of 2017, Citarella was supporting himself with varied freelance and temporary jobs, including photography for New York galleries and editing for commercial images. Citarella has reworked aspects of his freelancing work into his own art pieces.
