Featured Artist: Giacomo Spazio

If Giacomo Spazio’s works were sounds, they would be harsh noise at the loudest volume: a gallery of “mean” pop images, with shocking, fluorescent colors that shout out their presence, as loud as possible. The reasons are many, but for him, who comes from experiences in graphics, performance and music, the cut & mix & paste is a practice intrinsic to his way of being. Art as a post-production, which uses pre-existing materials, making them his own and recombining them, affecting their perception and enjoyment.

The iconography in his works is borrowed from fanzines, daily newspapers, punk graphics and album covers of the 1970s and 1980s. The mind immediately races to Andy Warhol’s silkscreens and Pop Art, but it is only a superficial evocation, because Spazio goes well beyond, making his own the practice of incursion, using information and images from the media to propose them with an ironic and desecrating, cynical and subversive intention. By manipulating images, the artist carries out a critique on information, denouncing its presumed truthfulness.

Giacomo was born in 1957 in Italy. Although his artistic career started with performances, in 1975 he started painting and became one of the first street artists in Italy. He now lives in Milan, where he is part of the collective that has created the “Limited No Art Gallery”, an independent art gallery launched  in 2006 to promote art, without prejudice.

His new solo show “Pop Life” opens tonight in Milan at the Don Gallery ; Giacomo will also take part into “Beyond Good & Evil” the group show we will present next week.

We asked the artist about his recent creations, to understand that DIY (Do It Yourself) attitude and how the lo-fi style of the photocopy can be elevated to the status of Artwork.

YOU NEED ME, Mixed Media on Canvas, 2010, SOLD

Hi Giacomo.  When you were young, have you ever thought that when you’d be 53 years old, you would still do art and open a gallery?

Hi!

I think that when you are young, it is very hard to think that one day you will be an artist. Especially if you come from a working class family like me. Personally, I never asked myself this question. To create “my things” was the only way to avoid working in a factory all my life.

You were already evolving in art in the 70′s and the 80′s.  What is the main difference between those times and now?

To tell the truth, the only real difference is the following:

Rich people in the 70′s gave money to create and this was surely a gift from the Freaks/Hippies culture. In the 80′s, the Punk movement gathered very different kind of people, united by the “No Future!” claim. In the opposite, today everything goes faster!

But to create your own culture, you need a lot of time and this is always the same, at every period of time.

Do you miss that, these years?

No! For me the past is the past! When I think about it I smile, because I have been lucky and I’ve become the person I am now. A man. A man who loves everything that surrounds him. A man who likes present!

Today, do you have a model or an idol in art?

Personally I have no model from whom I take my inspiration. But I am very ecstatic of the quantity of really good artists who live in my time… And it is at this exact moment that I become very little and like an ant I try to work hard to get results which talk for me, without copying anyone.

When you work on a piece, how do you feel?

I am always happy, even when I deal with sad themes. If I am sad, I just want to be left alone.

I AM NOT A NUMBER 2010 – Mixed Media on Canvas.

What kind of music do you listen to when you are “working”?

First of all the music must be very loud, almost deafening. I listen to all kind of music from Daft Punk to Polygon Window via Pole and from Tubelord to Heptones via Tikiman. I go crazy for music and almost all of my works have a link with it!

You use a lot of techniques in your creations. Do you have a favorite one? Why?

I prefer serigraphy (silkscreen), because I like the idea of repetition. But every piece is unique. The main subject is the same, but I change the language, the color, and everything that isn’t part of the image in the foreground.  But sometimes, even the main subject is different.

You also use a lot of different colors. What do they represent for you?

The only way to be really unique! Colors I use are most of the time my own colors I create! For exampl the base color is made of silicon, white steel, silver and white pearl.

If you were a dictionary, what would be the definition of Art?

No mater how, but express yourself with all the means necessary. (DIY)

Your are an artist but you also opened a gallery in Milan which is called  “Limited No Art Gallery” , how do you feel being on the “other side”?

I didn’t open an art gallery but my studio became a place for exhibitions where I try to put in contact creative persons, curious ones and collectors, showing them what I personally think to be unique, interesting and beautiful. Sometimes, I had to be a curator because some people asked me to be a curator. It is a work that I respect a lot and by making it I have learnt that like dishonest curator, it also exists dishonest artists!

How do you select the artists who make exhibitions in the Limited No Art Gallery?

Usually, I organize exhibitions of artists I personally know and whose work I admire. Sometimes, I give the exhibition space for free.

Do you have children? Are they artists too?

I have two sons and they are creative like all the young people in the world. By now, they are both interested in music. The first one is 20 years old, he plays bass and sings. The second one is 17 years old and he plays drums.

What kind of job would you have done if you were not an artist?

When I was 13 years old I wanted to be a poet and maybe it is the reason why there are always letters, lyrics and/or small sentences in my works.

Tell me the very last word of this interview!

ANARTCHIST!  (I invented this word and it means I’m an anarchy artist to explain exactly what I am)

Thank you very much for this interview Giacomo!

Super!

Available artworks