Italy

MARCO AGOSTINELLI

An angel without wings is the title of the first poem written by Marco Agostinelli. His art has always been populated by shadows, angelic creatures tied down inside the image. This poetical and narrative inspiration gives shape to his whole work: the artist has always been using technique as a mean for imagination, never indulging in new-media-art empty formalism. Agostinelli has the eye of the director who sees through the camera lens, trying to catch and celebrate the tragic beauty of the world. So he came to release works like Shen Blue, shot in 2002 during a trip to Shenzen, China, a town populated by young people, and Heart of dog in 2001, a manipulation of an old Stalinist film. These are frescos that make you see through, exposing the hopes of an era betrayed by its own utopias, the conflict between ideas and material world. This is also the awareness behind Guerre/Solitudini/Resurrezioni e altre Epifanie, exhibited at the Italy Pavilion during the Venice Biennale of 2011. At the Croatia Pavilion of the Venice Biennale of 2013 the artist presented Unconscious, with Kata Mijatovic white dressed sleeping in a white gondola throughout the Canal Grande at sunrise. All men are angels without wings but they can fly in their sleep, softly dancing in the simulacrum of life. Dancing on Spoleto is both an homage and a goodbye to his native land, since the artist has been living in Venice in the last six years. Here he has founded a “factory”, the Marco Agostinelli Art Project, which gathers young talents and promotes projects in and for the town.

text by Roberta Semeraro