lower east life
New York, June 10, 2009
LOWer east LIFE
A show by Angelo Bellobono
Coordinated by Serena Trizzino
From the very beginning of his career, Angelo Bellobono has always placed humanity and the territory at the centre of his artistic research, stressing the difficult relations of belonging and identity, understood not simply in the socio-cultural sense but also in a biological sense. The mechanisms by which biochemistry translates into behaviours and emotions is the thread running through all his paintings, videos and performances, taking the emphasis away from the presumed spirituality animating human existence.
His portraits thus convey a sense of dramatic irony, lost in a blinding whiteness or in a dark sea of crude oil, at once liquid and solid, conceptually unstable and temporary, dependent on their chemical sense of biological precariousness. They reveal the constant efforts made to seek out an identity and a place in which to belong, a constant freezing and unfreezing of hidden or denied existences and of an ideal well-being. Bellobono gives form and consistency to a sampler of emotions experienced by all human beings; in his most recent works, which also probe the drive to immigrate, this investigation once again combines painting with performance and video art.
The manner in which the paintings and drawings are installed is meant to portray a prophetic analysis about how Europe is sliding back into the darkness of xenophobia, racism and ignorance. The naked Obama portrait displays the president becoming lost in the stupidity of the white world, while remaining the only one attempting to create order in this world with too many flags, too much arrogance, too many dangerous mental disorders, and rampant individual distortion. It’s as if Orwell’s 1984 (which was an invisible reality) is becoming the normal way of being.
The show will present the Obama facing the rest of the world, represented by an old dark man with a red cross on his lips, like if he speaks with language of religion, intolerance, and conservatism. The interaction between the two painting is meant to signify the tension and the conflict growing between Obama and European leaders who are becoming more conservative.
The show will also present drawings of many people and faces. So many faces have dissappeared from the wall and only the nails remain to remind us of times of extreme government control and coerscion, such as the “desaparecidos” in Argentina. Further, so many intolerant people indulge in their fetishes, and so many dress codes are used to cover our insane attitudes.
Sam Smith-Stevens