Dispatches from Urizen Print

Alessandro Fantini is a selfmade-artist devoted to experimentation of medianic beauty through mixing several media (video, music, painting, drawing, writing, acting). Therefore he defines himself a "multimedianic artist". His first attempt in creating his own aesthetic parallel universe was during his childhood, when he was intrigued by drawing comic strips and tales inspired to Disney world. Over the years his passion about mysteries and gothic atmospheres pushed him to search other ways of self-expression through using water colour on board and oil on canvas. He was fascinated by the link between sound and images when someone let him use a camcorder allowing him to spend days filming stormy skies, eclipses, old photos mixed with frames of giant eyes and his own body sections. His first paintings were influenced by the gloomy and dreamlike climate of the surreal period of Dali. At the same time he developed a vionary literary dimension writing romance and novels which resemble a mixture of d'Annunzio's obsession for lushious details and sophistication and the distorted abomination realms of Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Sheridan Le Fanu and Maupassant. He wrote his first 200 pages romance at 14 on a school notebook. After the long period of research between Rome and London in order to collect the documents needed for the completion of his university thesis about the relationship between Preraphaelites and Italian painters, he continued his artistic quest involving also mystical themes and more morbid compositions inspired by Giger works and Rossetti's poetry. Since 1996 he produced and directed a series of short-movies, mostly using the natural locations of Abruzzo and the urban environments of Rome, Tokyo, New York and London. References to the style of Lynch, Bunuel, Tarkovsky and Kubrick can be found in his video concept.A self-portrait of him was published on the Jean Michel Jarre's Aero booklet in 2004.In 2006 he co-wrote and illustrated an anthology of fantasy tales while his short-movie "Tiranti Transit" was broadcasted on a Sky channel. In 2007 he released the dark-fantasy book "Endometria - The seed of flesh" illustrated by his drawings and paintings.A selection of his oil canvas has been exhibited at the London Brick Lane Gallery in october 2007.In 2008 he released his first art book entitled "The Sinovial Gaze- The art of Alessandro Fantini".