Happy Hour with the Artist | Marco Parente

Happy Hour with the Artist | Marco Parente “I’m waiting for the war to be fought that will make the world safe for anarchy and I wait for the final withering of all governments. And then Big Brother threw everything in our faces as always, not to inform us, not to make us conscious, sentient. Not to perhaps finally get indignant, after all it’s not tomato cans against useless paintings,  it’s not paints against a building. No, it’s much less, it’s worth much less. And so little by little every day, as always, we got used to this too. To make everything that is not normal become normality and short paragraphs in a newspaper”. From the pages of a recent diary: “I wanted to focus only on my little inner world but how do you do that when everything is so absurd and wrong outside? And above all, what’s the point? They were intense, rich and full of emotions days. I’m still shaken. I believe that Marco Parente has given me a lot. We’ll talk about it, we’ll still hear the echo. For now I’m looking for the words to express this awareness as King would say, but I only find colors around. Would you love a scorpion less because it behaves like one?” Lawrence Ferlinghetti These small pieces on display are Revolution. I was inspired by Marco Parente’s texts, by his gentle revolution and I created new works that found a place and space and air in my world, my beating heart, a small resistant gallery that could not exist without the us that all together we are building. Let’s cross the yellow line that divides us and let ourselves be carried away. I’m doing it.

They live among us

They live among us for BoCS Art, curated by Alberto Dambruoso (Cosenza) 2017 The project was born during the BocsArt artist’s residency and it originates from a parallelism between the wolf, a totemic animal of the city of Cosenza, and the figure of the artist in the collective imagination. In fact, the artist is often considered as a strange animal, on the edge of society if he/she decides to escape the capitalist logic of productive utilitarianism. Starting from Pellizza da Volpedo’s Quarto Stato, Conte elaborates a static march on the large Bocs window. A march in which people mingle with men and women with wolf heads. The public can march with them by occupying the empty spaces in the window. The work promotes protection, integration and participation, tracing the very same aspiration to inclusion of the Gay Pride that was taking place in the city for the first time precisely on July 2017. The ideal of “feeling at home” is the root of the pictorial intervention as of the opening of the Bocs. The artist felt welcomed by the residence and by the city, so he wanted to welcome back the other artists, and the activists, the supporters and the sympathizers of Pride, and all the visitors who ideally wish to join the Vivono tra noi march. The title is deliberately ambiguous, because the omission of the subject makes it impossible to understand whether it is wolves who live among “normal” people or “normal” people who live among wolves: inclusion is not intended as adherence to the pre-existing system, but to the peer acceptance of the other.

Cooked nature

Natura cotta Series of 3 works made in 2014 in mixed media.

What is not there

What is not there My cowardly way of staying hoping there is. Five works, a deconstructed story, a journey standing still, for the first time in a long time, to discover the most intimate part, the hidden one, the one that is scary. Come on a littleblue bird in the heart. Like all artists, they have secrets, like letters stolen from the supermarket for a loaf of bread and a shred of fame. Artists have no secrets, in the eyes of others they find themselves fragile between certainties and hopes. A journey, these works of mine, to discover these secrets between past and future, between a lost and a sought-after innocence. Among the guardians of the house to protect my personal hearth, naked, I will look for the right questions, which we are all good at giving the answers. A mask to say who we are, then the time will come to remove that too. Today it is still too scary. A work, a stage, a fixed point. I’ll take everything I’ve been with me so as not to lose any pieces along the way: a small suitcase, a pair of shoes, a marker, an unanswered question. What is not there.  

Hic et nunc

Hic et nunc Series of 3 works made in 2014 in mixed media.

Resistance diary

Resistance diary Series of 3 works made in 2014 in mixed media.

The usual suspects

The usual suspects A special project dedicated to legality and studied on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the great mafia massacres. A plastic bag on your head because by not looking, not speaking and not hearing you don’t live better, you just die in a different way. A black plastic bag to cover art, that history of art that today is denied to future generations. The mafia as silence, suffocation, chains, denied beauty and disfigured beauty. A project on silence to try to make noise. Legality as sharing beauty, culture, rules intended as respect for others and not as impositions. Legality is freedom, participation and awareness.  

Sculptural groups

Sculptural groups Group of canvases, created in 2012, having as their subject famous sculptural groups. Amore e Psiche Acrilico su carta – 80×120 Il bacio Acrilico su carta – 80×120 Apollo e Dafne Acrilico su carta – 80×120 Laocoonte Acrilico su carta – 80×120

Faces from facebook

Facce da facebook The project takes its cue from the famous Andy Warhol’s motto (“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes “) and overturns it with: “in the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen people” highlighting how much the idea of an ephemeral and self-celebrating celebrity exasperated from the social networks is part of our daily life.   Conte paints photos published on his profiles by some Facebook users on wrapping paper, creating poetic and sometimes disturbing portraits. Between 2009 and 2013 the project crossed Italy (Naples, Forlì, Milan, Roccagorga in the province of Latina and Pennadomo in the province of Chieti) enriching itself along the way with ever new portraits.   The project brought together the photos of the Facebook profiles of ordinary people, turning them into works of art and giving the subjects the aura of famous people, at least in the circle of the page that hosted the project. The page, on the other hand, served as an echo for the project itself, as users posted their photos in hopes of being chosen for the next portrait.  

War gamese – unique

War games – Unique It is an installation project that highlights Conte’s bitter reflection on the link between armed conflicts and economic interests. It can be divided into three parts: the point of view of the victim, that of the executioner and lastly the inevitability – and uselessness – of surrender. Wargames was born within Unique, a series of six exhibitions each dedicated to a color, hosted at the LineaDarte gallery in Naples in 2014. The installations are therefore dominated by the chromatic essence of the exhibit they were first hosted. Orange by using a chessboard summarizes the cynicism that makes people expendable over profit. Blue shows the false myths of capitalism, necessary to maintain the status quo. Bot, from the victims’ point of view.   Yellow and Red symbolize the mighty of the earth who can play dices with people’s and nations’ fate and decide to destroy it all by pressing a button. Black is the apex of the conflict, White shows how the search for peace can take on the grotesque tones of a surrender and how the very economic interests that had caused the conflicts are able to profit from their conclusion as well.