IN POP WE TRUST
Banksy, Fairey-Obey, Ferrone Viola, Gekko, Haring, Hirst, Kelley, Indiana, Lichtenstein, Mapplethorpe, Pedersoli, Stein, Stern, Warhol.
Live Performance by Fabio Ferrone Viola
Vernissage Monday 21 October 2019 at 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Exhibition 21 October – 30 November 2019
Restelliartco. Gallery
Via Vittoria Colonna, 9 – 00193 Rome
Opening hours: Monday and Saturday 10.30 am – 1.30 pm; 3.30 pm – 8.00 pm
From Tuesday to Friday 10.30 am – 8.00 pm
Info:
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Stella Maresca Riccardi +39 3429857662 stella.marericcardi@gmail.com
Pop as "Popular", to define a movement revolutioning the concept of art, with the artist no longer engaged in a form of individual expression, but in the role of an observer of a consumer society that in turn becomes the object of artistic expression . With its amplified world, made up of full and vivid colors and shiny plastic surfaces, Pop Art chooses the anti-artistic object par excellence: the mass-produced consumer goods created by industry. And makes it iconic.
"With In Pop We Trust - explain the gallery owners Raffaella Rossi and Filippo Restelli - we wanted to emphasize, the importance of the role of a narrating subject (the artist) who shows us through his works how we really are, what our myths and new fetishes are, in an era that through social networks and media seems to burn every fashion and every emotion to the rhythm of like."
And if in general in Europe and in the United States the Pop wave corresponds to a questioning of society, culture and lifestyles, among the peculiar characteristics of Italian Pop Art emerges the inalienable relationship with culture, traditions and ours artistic history ..."An American paints Coke as a value - said Tano Festa - for me Michelangelo is the same thing, in the sense that we live in a country where instead of consuming canned food we consume the Mona Lisa on chocolates".
Here then are the gas cans of old war vehicles on which the Roman artist Fabio Ferrone Viola paints a Christ with a suffering and tormented face inspired by Jesus of Nazareth by Franco Zeffirelli. In "Fuel of Love", the cans in the past have contained gasoline, propulsion liquid that starts the engine, today welcome on their surface a sacred image. This is Passion intended as the means through which to evoke active and emotional participation of the spectator.
"A Christ communicator and messenger of an inner revolution that every individual ought to adopt - explains Fabio Ferrone Viola - A job that comes from my passion in recovering consumables and waste materials such as cans, bottles, corks: every packaging has its own history and beyond. It is somehow inextricably linked to the positive sensations it aroused in its first user: drinking from a can causes a sense of fulfillment, of well-being, and all of this somehow remains in the object, constituting for me a primary source of inspiration ".
Cristiana Pedersoli piggy banks are everyday objects that come back to life as well. Daughter of the famous Bud Spencer, the artist will present at the Restelliartco Gallery her Pop Regrets, piggy banks in terracotta, acrylic and enamel painted, The one with the image of Diabolik and the one with the face of Bud Spencer are of particular interest,
"It all started with a piggy bank that my father gave me - she explains - he called it a "Gatherer of Dreams ", because inside we would have put some money with which then a wish would come true. The Piggy Bank already recalls the maternal womb due to its shape and evokes an idea of acceptance and care: it has the function of bringing back to life concepts that are now lost, such as waiting, focusing on an objective and the postponement of every desire. It can be a dream factory, the chance to get something that you can't get right away, it's a positive bet, a stone thrown in the future… "
The Restelliartco, one is a temporal narration accompanying the visitor on a journey within a generation that has made the image the means through which to express oneself and one's personality. From the early 1970s works of Warhol to the rugs of Robert Indiana, photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, screenprints by Keith Haring, artworks by Roy Lichtenstein, Mike Kelley, Obey-Shepard Fairey, and contemporary Norman Gekko, that with its Louis Vuitton and Chanel, deformed and built in recycled materials, tells the selfish exhibitionism of a society of fake well-being staged every day on social networks. An artist whose identity is still not known. Norman Gekko is a pseudonym and on this issue he says "The name Norman Gekko personifies an idea. Norman could so easily be ‘no man’ and ‘Gekko’ can be seen as a reference to the small lizard that hides within its surroundings” the gecko. He remains motionless and observes, he chatters with his works.
THE EXHIBITION
Among the presented artworks:
Banksy
Di-Faced Tenner, 2004
Offset print - cm. 7.6 x 14.2
Banksy had handed some notes out at the Notting Hill Carnival and the Reading Festival in 2004. The note has been altered to read “Banksy of England” instead of "Bank of England" as well as showing Diana’s face instead of the Queen’s. It is titled Di-Faced Tenner, a play on the word “defaced”, referring to the counterfeit nature of the banknote. The work is a clear denunciation of the distorted relationship between art and value in the 21st century. Banksy's false banknote is the artist's first work to enter the British Museum's permanent collection.
Banksy
Silver Flag, 2006 Limited Edition of 1000
Screenprint - cm. 50 x 70
Flags shows a group of children and young adults standing victoriously atop a burnout car raising the American flag. Banksy’s work is a clear and controversial reference to the Iwo Jima battle scene, and more specifically to the iconic photograph “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” by American photographer Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945. The photo depicts six US Marines lifting the Stars and Stripes atop Mont Suribachi, during the battle of Iwo Jima.
Banksy
Turf War, 2003 Limited edition of 750
Screen print on paper - cm. 49 x 34
Printed signature, numbered bottom right on the front.
In July 2003, Banksy had one of his first solo exhibitions "Turf Wars" in Dalston, London. On display there is the portrait of former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill turned into a punk icon, with his characteristic concentrated and fierce look that, during the Second World War, earned him the nickname “British Bulldog”. In Turf War, Banksy reimagines Winston Churchill as a punk rocker with a bright green strip of hair resembling a “mohawk” but also a piece of turf. The title Turf War - territory war, seems to suggest that the war during which Churchill was prime minister had actually been a sort of border battle to the detriment of the lives of civilians
Fabio Ferrone Viola
Fuel of Love, 2018 Unique work
Acrylic on 70s military tanks - cm.185 x 140 x 20
It is the work-manifesto of the exhibition. The use of old military tanks becomes a means to exorcise the tragedy of war and a destiny of death, not only in reference to man but also to objects, destined to die according to wastefulness consumerist mentality.
Norman Gekko
Chanel XL, 2019 Unique work for Restelliartco.
Mixed media on metal cm.107 x 70 x 36
Gekko combines humor and social criticism in creating an unmistakable style. The artist creates artworks that are not simply original for their style, but are also entirely unique - there will not be two alike. Exclusively for Restelliartco. the artist presents a series of works created thanks to the recycling of cans and other waste objects, such as this Chanel bottle made from a Total barrel.
Norman Gekko
Ballantines, Limited Edition
Mixed media on metal cm. 31 x 13 x 12
In the beginning was the Coke, a true American icon. What are the icons of our century? A scotch with a refined and exclusive packaging, market leader in Europe and in the world. It is an object of consumption but part of what is defined by sociologists as "compensatory consumption", a sort of status symbol to be achieved at all costs.
Keith Haring
Apocalypse, 1988 Limited edition of 90
Screenprint on paper - cm. 96,2 x 96,2
Numbered, dated and signed by the artist. It is part of the portfolio of ten "Apocalypse" screenprints.
In 1988, while he was suffering from AIDS, Keith Haring began his collaboration with William S. Burrough, creating a series of ten different "Apocalypse" screenprints describing the history of Haring's personal struggle against the disease. The Apocalypse is the final act, the one in which a man close to death feels that the creatures that populate his nightmares are more real than ever.
Robert Indiana
Chosen Love, 2006 Limited edition of 175
Dyed wool carpet, hand tufted - cm. 240 x 240
The self proclaimed “American painter of signs,” Robert Indiana achieved success in 1966 with his "LOVE", a simple and powerful message consisting of four capital letters; the letter O positioned obliquely connects diagonally with the V, creating a sense of asymmetry, which according to some critics recalls the instability of love. Robert Indiana's composition is abstract, formally sophisticated, a word-poetry. The brilliant contrast of colors gives the word an extraordinary visual intensity. With the slightest change in light the positive becomes negative and vice versa, with an almost violent effect for the view. On the back is the phrase: "With proper care, this work of art will bring LOVE to your environment for many generations”.
Cristiana Pedersoli
Diabolik, 2017 Limited Edition
Acrylic and enamel on terracotta - cm 30 x 27
Bud, 2019 Unique work for Restelliartco.
Acrylic and enamel on terracotta - cm 30 x 27
"We are nothing but containers of moments, colors and emotions, I try to make them tangible". Examples of the artist's "Pop Regrets", dedicated to Diabolik and Bud Spencer
Andy Warhol
Most Wanted Man, 1967
Black and white screenprint on paper - cm. 44.5 x 77
The work portrays the outlaw Louis M. and was created on the occasion of the exhibition "The Thirteen Most Wanted Men" at the Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris in 1967, in a different format from the screen prints exhibited there. Warhol decides to Warhol chose to enlarge mug shots of the NYPD’s 13 most wanted criminals on commission from Philip Johnson, to adorn the outside wall of the New York State Pavilion’s on the occasion of the 1964 World Exhibition. The images in black and white are screenprinted on square panels, and mounted in a check-out pattern -36 m - able to cover the outside of the building, but the subject matter gives rise to immediate political reactions. The management asks Warhol to remove the panel. Therefore the artist decides to cover his work with silver-colored paint so that the memory of the censorship suffered will remain indelible. Warhol subsequently produced the portraits for the exhibition at the Galerie Sonnabend in Paris.
Andy Warhol
Marilyn Monroe, "Sunday B. Morning", 1970 Limited Edition
Screenprint on paper - cm. 84.5 x 84.5
Hand-signed by Andy Warhol with the words ‘This is not by me’ and prints ‘fill in your own signature’ and ‘published by Sunday B. Morning’ in black ink on the back. Edition of different colors from the original portfolio.
The image of Marilyn is taken from the advertising photography of Gene Korman created for the 1953 film "Niagara" and used by Warhol for the 1967 portfolio. In 1970 Sunday B. Morning realizes the non authorized series of Marilyn commonly known as ‘This Is Not By Me’ in size cm 84.5 x 84.5 with different colors from the original portfolio and with ‘fill in your own signature’ and ‘published by Sunday B. Morning’ in black ink on the back.
Artists
