I generally don’t like snarky – you’d rather build something than destroy something, right? At the same time, when I’m in the snarky mood, I go full on. And of course, when that happen, I really enjoy the bravado. Otherwise how would I earn the title of contemporary art super-villain? Like in this piece for the Sunday Times of Malta, for which I love to put a desecrator of contemporary art attitude. You might say, making fun of contemporary art is way too easy, but I can’t help it; sometimes you just walk in an exhibition and you start rubbing your hands!
Tag "los angeles"
ITA:
Il giovane artista Robberto è recentemente tornato da Los Angeles dove ha esposto nella galleria Madhood Temporary (qui il mio comunicato stampa).
Una settimana fa ci siamo incontrati su sua richiesta al Verano, uno dei cimiteri più belli di Roma – almeno credo, non sono un’esperta in materia – e abbiamo chiacchierato riguardo l’esperienza dell’artista a LA, le opere realizzate lì, il mondo dell’arte americano a confronto con quello italiano e così via.
Sono stata a lungo combattuta sul pubblicare o meno sul mio blog l’audiointervista nella sua interezza. Sebbene mi trovi d’accordo sul disappunto e la disillusione di Robberto riguardo al mondo dell’arte italiano, mi piacerebbe essere comunque portatrice di una visione ottimista.
Nell’intervista però si trovano anche dei momenti di grande afflato e bellezza dove Robberto parla con passione della propria arte e di come, nonostante le difficoltà, non possa rinunciarci. Siccome gli artisti non vanno censurati, sopratutto quelli che si esprimono rispetto ad una condizione condivisa, ecco Robberto in tutta la sua incazzatura.
EN:
Italian emerging artist Robberto is back from Los Angeles where he recently had an exhibition called “Fake Skin” at Madhood Temporary (here my press release).
A week ago he asked me to meet at the Verano, Rome’s biggest and the most beautiful cemetery I suppose – I’m not an expert of cemeteries so I can’t make comparisons- and we had a conversation about his experience in LA, the US art world vs the Italian one, his art and so forth.
Until the last minute I didn’t know if I wanted to post the entire audio record on my blog or not. Robberto turned out to have a very disillusioned and bitter opinion of the Italian art world and, even if I share his concerns, I would rather have an optimistic attitude.
Then I thought about the parts of the interview where he talks about the joy and the inevitability of art making, and I thought that could be very inspiring.
I don’t really feel I should censure artists, so I decided to post the interview, unfortunately available only in Italian.
Robberto is a talented emerging Italian artist that I have been not only following but also collecting.
I recently wrote the text for his exhibition Fake (Skin), now on at Madhood Temporary in Los Angeles. I posted it below along with some pictures that Robberto sent me as a preview.
FAKE (SKIN)
For his first solo show in the United States, Robberto is presenting a new series of work realized during his stay in Los Angeles.
His research starts from a linguistic observation around the meaning of the word buck, that is used for call “dollars ”
The artist decided to go deeper into this duality and study the etymology of this expression, finding out that buck is the abbreviation of buckskin, a common medium of exchange in trading between the natives and the Europeans.
There are documents from 1748 saying “Every cask of Whiskey shall be sold to you [Indians] for 5 Bucks.” The transition from buckskin to dollars seems only natural.
This finding leads the artist to think about the perception of wildlife and nature in the city of Los Angeles.
He reached the conclusion that the nature in town, is just a fake perception of the real natural environment and that the trees, the water and the animals have just been pushed in 150 years, a really short time, to cohabit together with 20 millions of peoples, this created in him a feeling of displacement.
