ADULT CHILDHOOD Show: Stefano Bolcato + SOLO Artists

-Stefano Bolcato was born in Rome where he lives and works. He started drawing as a self taught student at the end of the Eighties. In the Nineties he followed some academic courses amongst which the free Academy of Life Drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, with Alfonso Avanessian and the Ornamental Art School courses with Giovanni Arcangeli. Today his personal research stretches along two different ways: one keen on figurative through the landscape and architectural settings combines a thorough use of colours with mysterious elements. His canvasses are somehow reminiscent of metaphysical and intimate investigation. The other path concerns themes recalling the small somehow infinite world of childhood but not exclusively. The artist while setting his scenes under a magnifying glass delineates dense social scenes and perspectives of daily realism. The power of these works is not only in their sometimes dramatic content but in their vivid colours as in the foreshortened close ups which involve and draw the viewer on them.

-SOLO was born in Rome in 1982; his passion for art took shape at the beginning of the 90’s during the explosion of the writing movement, and developed towards street art ten years later. In 2003 he enrolled with the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, from which he graduated with top marks after publishing an anthology on the American artist Ronnie Cutrone, an important representative of Pop Art and also Andy Warhol’s assistant, who he personally interviewed. The interview was filmed in the atelier of the artist in New York, and it will be kept in the historical archives of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome. Alongside several projects in Italy and abroad – such as his London collaboration with the videomakers The Butchers – These installations were then presented at the international festival of electronic music Dissonanze, in June 2010; at the festival Get Numb, the scenery from the Main Stage during the show of Two Many DJS; and the Push Festival of Arezzo, scenography for Vitalic, Cassius, and Etienne De Crecy, Uffie. Solo featured in numerous group and solo shows, both in Italy and abroad, and has been invited to various urban renewal projects, both in the French city: Vitry Sur Seine, that in the town of Taormina, Sicily and Ibiza. Solo’s art is rooted in comics and street art. Through his straightforward and vibrant style he creates, represents and re-elaborates a wide range of subjects: from comic books characters to everyday objects, landscapes, cityscapes and masterpieces of the past. Solo throws his subjects into a fantastic world, adding a new chapter to their history. His paintings both subtly and obviously reveal emotional and experiential paths that the artist hopes people would recognize themselves into. Solo usually starts his creative process with acrylic color drawings. Then he adds layers of different materials and media, from oil painting, to chalk, coffee, food and other things that inspire him at the very moment of creation. SOLO keeps working on walls, carrying on several stylistic researches, but never giving up his favourite iconic word: the superhero imaginary. Once placed on the streets, his subjects turn into characters that the artist makes us acquainted with order to let us feel less lonely in an often harsh society. In 2013 he went to Paris to Prague, for solo and group exhibitions, pointing in every urban center its presence through the icons superhero who leaves a gift on the walls of the cities it passes through.Then return in the same year, in his city of origin, with the solo exhibition, “Heroes in Crisis” in the Varsi gallery, curated by Marta Gargiulo.

“I incorporate and then recreate anything that strikes me or that I like. From objects, to landscapes, to art classics, they come back to life through my eyes and therefore through my art. Every piece of art has its own life, its own history.” “I leave hidden traces, or depict evident ones, so that anyone can hopefully find a piece of themselves in my work. Feeling involved, grasping a sense of familiarity.” “My instinct, as an artist, is to give color to anything that surrounds me.” “ My tools: the use of acrylics is the base, but then I’ll use any other source of color the world can offer: from coffee to blood.”


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ADULT CHILDHOOD Vernissage