The Sons of Rose Selavay and the "Aura machine"
Dimensions: L cm 150, H cm 150 Technique: Acrylic paint and mixed techniques on canvas. |
For the 100th anniversary of "Fountain", the reknown Marcel Duchamp's "ready-made" art piece, I decided to dedicate him the most challenging work of art I have ever created, a true post-modern soup.
With a clever artistic intention Marcel turned a simple urinal into "Fountain", a true piece of art. As Calvin Tomkins wrote in Marcel Duchamp's official biography : " ... The Artist is just a "mediumistic being" who is there to bring the artwork into existence. No matter what he sets out doing, the final product is different than what he had in mind, and this is the “Gap” - what Lou Reed called "Between thought and expression".
By doing so Marcel created some sort of a devilish Aura-producing machine.
The Artist and the Art Business world "aurify" the body of work, turning it into art. I , on the other hand , aurified my daughter L'Aura , musician and singer-songwriter, using just an apostrophe. As a simple syllogism I should also be an Artist. Luckily enough or unfortunately, I am not. I must aurify myself as accurately as I can , because there are no critics or art curators who are willing to write reams about my work.
First of all, there are many characters in this art piece. The first is Mondrian who, with his colorful and powerful grid , creates the perfect background, in the likes of a cathedral window letting the (Art world) sunset light come in. Then we see Snoopy hiding in his dog bed a Van Gogh, a pool table, a tv screen, etc... ( from Wikipedia ) After reading " Mercanti d'Aura" ( "Aura's Dealers", in the English version I translated ) the world's most famous beagle wonders what he's going to do with his Van Gogh, just like any good money-oriented American Art collector would wonder. He fears that what once was a real treasure could vanish in the haze, crushed by Contemporary Art products. May I give my most sincere compliments to Dal Lago and Giordano for their really nice essay. I highly recommend it even to those who are not working in the Art industry. The two sons of Rose Selavay ( taken from "Eros, c'e là vie", one of Marcel's many pseudonyms - after all he was an Artist with a great sense of humour), Maurizio Cattelan and Damien Hirst, took advantage of their Artistic Father's jesture ,turning their careers into living examples of their spiritual father's poetics. The fact they urinated in a fountain is not some kind of a kinky action. They perfectly know they're peeing in urinal, although it's a special one. That urinal may transform organic fluid into crystal clear art water, overflowing in the Contemporary Art World, depicted here as a stormy sea, at least on the surface. The dukes of Urbino (a small but pleasant town in Middle-Southern Italy ) are two stern witnesses of "an artistic urination". They act as spokespeople for the great renaissance Artist Piero Della Francesca. Piero kindly agreed to contribute to this sort of performance on canvas ( 150cm x 150cm ) allowing me to use his world-famous portrait as an advertisement for sodas. One is bubbly and supposedly stimulates burping, as opposed to the other, which has a Viagra retro-taste in order to facilitate well-crafted sexual spinning. To be perfectly clear the penises on the left side of the painting are a repetition of a famous Cattelan's Art Piece, in a Andy Warhol's kind of fashion ( Duchamp's first son ). Bubbles on the right are hinting at Damien Hirst's inflated "spots", which I tried to re-elaborate in the guise of the very contemporary pop icons called "emoticons". In order to represent the stormy sea, I stole Hokusai's wave, repeating it in a Pop Art style and combining it with a trivial wave I found on the Internet, something that could blend well with the rest of the painting. The Art World surface is rough; it is no easy task to dive into it, but once you're in everything falls into place. The fish that live there who form the word “ART” are quite dangerous predators recalling Hirst's formaldehyde sharks Art Piece called “The Physical Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living”. There's also innocuous fish that I borrowed from Paul Klee and the spermatozoons shaped ones who are ready to artistically impregnate anything or anyone. On the bottom you may notice Homo Sapiens' or ludens' (depending on your point of view) footprints. The primate is enjoing himself; he likes what he's seeing . He expresses his sociopathic “like” that, together with the “likes” of the Dukes of Urbino ( the great Piero would totally approve that ) show us an absolutely self-referred Art World, shelled and well-protected from the outside world, just like it should be, as a matter of fact. End of description. Nevertheless, “... the final product is different than what he – the Artist – had in mind...”. Nevermind my “ermeneutical” effort, may everybody interpret it the way they wish, which is very “Experiencial Art”, a very fashionable Art style indeed. |
Internet of Things
| The expression "Internet of things"is not public domain yet, although for those who are more involved with the automation world is becoming a real-life Mantra. Soon it will be so pervasive that everyone will know about it . The IOT is going to be the fourth technology revolution in the history of human kind, affecting each and everyone . The "things" could be anything really: cell phones, TV sets, cars, the ”Nutella” factory plant, or any device with a microprocessor capable of communicating with the "cloud". All the produced "BIG DATA" flow into the cloud, turning into useful information and computer-generated decisions, in order to improve the quality of our lives. Planet EFA, the orange ball in the middle of the known universe, is attracting towards its own orbit the world best technologies in the industrial software and IIOT fields ( Industrial Internet of Things). Therefore, in the closest orbits we watch Ewon, Kepware, Intesis, HMS and Ignition shining clockwise around the ball. A little farther you may see other well known"things", companies like Apple or Twitter, twitting to the eye of a gas densification, symbolizing a factory of stars. Among those stars we see Franco and Gianfranco, the founders of EFA Automation SPA, shining through their blended profiles into the universe of things. Nevertheless, this universe of connected things isn't lacking of sex, art ( through references to Niki the Saint Phalle, Keith Haring, ect.) or the financial world, black holes, the theory of relativity, ancient Egypt with its own magical appeal, recalling aliens and remote galaxies. And then, of course, we find the marine abyss, love, yin and yang and many other fascinating things. Well, nothing is missing, really. Why did I make this art piece? Serge Bassem, president of the well renown company Ewon, a few years ago challenged me to depict the"Remote Access", Ewon's disrupting technology based on the Internet that is now part of our mutual success. The task was really challenging and it took me a long time before I figured the right way to do it. A dew covered spider web, and one of my favorite paintings by Spanish genious Joan Mirò inspired my art piece. I mixed those two images, adding a bit of personal creativity, and shook everything and then .."voilà, les jeux son fait". Well, of course, this vision of"the Internet of things"is from EFA's point of view, I'm sure you understand this.... | 
Dimensions: L cm 160, H cm 100 Technique: Acrylic paint and mixed techniques on canvas. |
Peppa Pig Sausages
Dimensions: L cm 160, H cm 112 Technique: Acrylic on canvas |
Can we feed ourselves without killing animals? yes, of course, but killing Peppa is a must!!! E' necessario uccidere un animale per alimentarci correttamente? Ovviamente no, ma c'é un’eccezione: Peppa Pig, la protagonista del cartoon più stupido, brutto e diseducativo che abbia mai visto. Da quando poi ho un nipote, il fastidio che sento alla sua insistenza nel volerlo vedere mi ha spinto ad azioni drastiche e ho deciso di esorcizzare questo mio malessere realizzando questo lavoro. Prendendo spunto da un'opera famosissima del grande Pablo, rappresentazione di una mattanza che avvenne durante la seconda guerra mondiale a Guernica, ho inserito alcune varianti postmoderniste per includere tutte le specie di animali che hanno costituito la nostra dieta di animali carnivori cioé quella equina, suina (peppa già trasformata in salsicce), ovina, bovina e volatili vari. Per non lasciare tracce della bella famigliola “porcina” rappresento l'atto della soppressione del fratello piagnone di Peppa, George. Ne faremo altrettante salsicce e non solo, perchè del maiale non si butta via niente, anche delle maialine... Ma di un'altra specie. |
Google Glass – Augmented Surreality – Snorkeling with Google Glasses into the Web Sea
First Art Piece, Symbol of the New Art Trend Choosing the two Google founders and their Google Glass as the starring roles of the first art piece was emblematic, to say the least. They were my alibi for an actually self-referred advertising message. Google is a research engine that scoops amongst millions of websites and other data to find what the “Web Navigator” is looking for. Larry Page, searching for a site in the deep blue sea, asks whether he should use Google Maps or not; Sergey Brin answers that Google Maps is essential, but Google Glass help being guided to the destination in a more efficient way. For their dialogues the two founders use balloons, just like in comic strips, using a typical Google lettering. The sea as a landscape was suggested to me by the immensity of the navigable web and the word “Google” reminds me of the imitative sound of someone trying to speak under water. We as an audience are the fish who is ready to be gaffed or to gaff others in this immense sea of trading, the Internet, mirror of our own world. The bubbles represent the hooks – the more or less occult advertising that suddenly pops-up while navigating. Beware that sometimes what may resemble harmless bubbles is in reality jelly-fish or itching sea-weeds (it's necessary to be careful on where the information is coming from and how to “weigh” its truthfulness). The most intelligent and experienced fish is able to fend off these traps. In conclusion, the commercial-at-sign is my logo, other than being a symbol for the Web, of course. |
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Marketing Art - An Attempt of Poetics
The new art trend has a strong"Pop"undertone because it must be understood by the greatest number of people without being necessarily too trivial.
The Marketing Art Trend is a figurative art form, and yet surreal, full of an"augmented"surreality just like it is described in the first art piece, and it partially identifies with the"Italian Brand Art".
It also embeds the promotion of the artwork itself (considering that the commercialization of art is inevitable) using logos, mottos and -drum rolls please- including its price (a symbolic one, at times), just like any hard discount product.
The last part is the most defiant. Indeed, we keep talking about Art as if it weren't identified with reality, which is made of bargains and sales that sometimes are piloted, therefore the artist might as well fix his or her own price.
These art pieces will be similar to bottles with a message that can be thrown to the waves of the Internet in the right spots where the target is more appropriate, and where the web surfers can run into, get info and ultimately buy them.
This way, the gap between the artwork production, the promotion and its sale through art dealers,galleries and auctions is completely fulfilled.
The ultimate goal is to go back to paint captivating images with vivid colors (typical trend of the XXI century), a job that even someone who is not a professional artist can get done.
Thanks to the Internet an amateur artist can promote him or herself to a huge online audience. It's clear how important a good critic/curator is in the middle of this process.
An art critic can give more literary"substance"to what I mentioned above and may help Yours Truly and those who will join this project to promote us efficiently to the art collectors/ web users.
Lady GAGA Pop Orgasm
The album cover She didn't dare to release
About a year ago, my “little sister” Germanotta asked me for a picture of mine to be used for the cover of her outcoming album. I worked hard on a certain idea, but the draft that came out was not appreciated by LG and everything ended there.
Meanwhile the draft was sent to Saatchi&Saatchi to participate in a specific contest; again, no success for it. But that picture is still available on the S&S site.
Six months ago I re-considered that draft and carried out some small changes that, in my opinion, would improve it so to deserve the final transfer on canvas.
And I did that.
When ready, I showed the final picture to Gaga, also suggesting the title for her new album: “Lady Gaga pop orgasm”. Unfortunately, everything was rejected again because it was considered “too trashy, too transgressive, too old-style pop, too little like her”…..
Technique: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: L cm 80, H cm 100
A few weeks later, I came to see Gaga new album: the cover is by Jeff Koons, (the well-known porn-star picker and famous contemporary artist) and it really has a lot of my original work, although duly censored…. Dear miss Germanotta, how bourgeois you became! No courage to introduce yourself with my cover!
And it would have cost you far far less! However I don’t have it in for you, but for Jeff, who will be sued for damages by my lawyer….
And you folks, what do you think?