PENSO, QUINDI DISOBBEDISCO Painting

EXPLOSIVE JUXTAPOSITIONS ARTPOPCLASSIC® by Marco Battaglini With explosive juxtapositions, the artist Marco Battaglini confronts the principles of idealistic beauty, personified in Renaissance painting, with the modern anarchic anti-consumerist ideology of graffiti, which defends the transformative power of disfigurement. With great visual impact, the details of the pastiche artworks deliberately expose the divergence between these two stylistic trends to emphasize the superficiality of our modern culture and the collapse of the concept of art and culture as a linear progression. “I have always liked art. I am the son of artists and all my studies have been in the field of the Arts: Liceo Artistico in Verona and then Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice”, says Marco Battaglini, who moved to Costa Rica from Italy some twenty years ago. “There are many movements that have influenced me. During my training, I became interested in surrealism, followed by abstract expressionism, up to conceptual art. I think that my fascination for different artists, movements, concepts and techniques has given rise to the desire to unify, to merge the different expressions, aesthetic and temporal, in a single composition”. Marco's "individual compositions" are energetic frames that can contain everything from ancient Greek pillars to Renaissance nudes, modern luxury brands, and urban graffiti. They gently combine respect for tradition with a tendency to rebellion. The beauty of classic order and form goes hand in hand with a wild and independent self-expression. It is as if these different forms of creativity are not enemies, but friends, two sides of the same coin. Neither can be suppressed or neglected. Both must always be on display, allowed and committed. "Almost everything you see in my work already exists," explains the artist. "All I do is capture all these elements belonging to different times, places and cultures in a work with the aim of expanding the range of possibilities of the viewer, to stimulate his imagination. I have come to the conclusion that IMAGINATION IS EVERYTHING, it is the vehicle that takes us to where we want to be, helps us create our reality and my art wants to be a way to expand the imagination of the observer, a tool to fly beyond the logical structures ". He continues: “I would like to involve the public and take it beyond what is apparent. It is normal to judge a neoclassical work as something 'noble', 'refined', 'elegant' and 'beautiful' and a graffiti on a wall as something 'insignificant', 'indecent', 'vulgar' and 'ugly' ... I want to be the means to expand the perception of things. Through the confrontation-union of different times, places, cultures, languages, ways of seeing reality. “The multiplicity of readings, which combines graffiti, symbols linked to Western culture and elements of pop art in a harmonious amalgam, forces us to rethink the values ​​linked to the reality in which we live, shows the impact that consumer society has in our way of living and thinking. We are not only consumers of products, but also of images, icons and symbolizations that are part of our culture. My work is an invitation to see reality "without blinders", from above the forest, not immersed in a specific context with limited parameters of analysis. I want to create a cultural and semantic clash with a series of contrasts that induce the viewer to become aware of its essence… and to peer into the potential of accessing infinite possibilities”.