ARTPOPCLASSIC
BY MARCO BATTAGLINI
Through a subtle interplay of multiple realities overlapping in the chronotope, Battaglini evidences the contradictions in mental models about the temporal contrast (chronological) and the cultural and linguistic barriers. Compositions, which at first seem ‘logical,’ immediately reveal temporal and spatial limitations that are disruptive in interpreting reality. Battaglini invites us to think that in today’s global village, with the ‘democratization’ of culture, the evolution of knowledge, information immediacy, immersed in the heterogeneity, the Patchwork Culture forces us to confront with a need understanding beyond our geographical boundaries of time.
The uniqueness of the Italian artist Marco Battaglini is probably to conceptualize the possible coexistence of classical beauty ideals with the anti-aesthetic, the combination of the divine and refined with the vulgar, through a composition that can complement different realities in an eternal instant.
His multidimensionality research leads him to overlap different temporal, spatial, and cultural realities, where everything seems to make sense… This is ultimately Battaglini’s purpose: to remove barriers that distort the perception of reality. Without a doubt, the work of Marco Battaglini (Verona, Italy, 1969) echoes the anxiety inherent in Western society during the 21st century. This artist’s work confronts us with an esthetic shock, a style charged with eclecticism, and a touch of humor that brings a smile to the spectator’s face while begging questions about the dogma that underlies current artistic and social scenes. ARTPOPCLASSIC captures Battaglini’s work’s main characteristic, specifically the inclusion of elements drawn from classic art alongside elements drawn from Pop art – an inter-textual puzzle rich with references. Here we see classic works of art transported to the present day, re-contextualized in contemporary art and social setting where new messages are sent that require the receiver’s cooperation.
AMOREDELLAMIAVITA ©Marco Battaglini – 207 x 130cm
This fusion offers us a clear view of the artist’s inclination toward exposing the intrinsic contradictions of the human condition, drawing inferences from the contrasts that result from the juxtaposition of essentially antagonistic artistic styles: the traditional current, with its general connotation of elitist superiority, merged with an art that emphasizes the popular culture of the masses, converging in an attempt to subvert and relative the value we attribute to Art – with a capital ‘A’. Battaglini revitalizes the subversive qualities of Pop art itself by placing the elements of that tendency in a contemporary setting. The confrontation that Pop elicited in “I am God, send me money” its moment by inserting mundane elements into the sphere of art has ceased to be what we would deem subversive, immersed as we are now in a context where mass culture has clearly achieved the status of a phenomenon – a condition from which there is no turning back. From this perspective, the work of Battaglini represents a fusion of classical art with Pop art – the latter with its own connotations – and converts both to fragments of a new esthetic that is, in some way, a reflection of the eclecticism and the fragmentation that are hallmarks of postmodernism.
Memento Audere Semper ©Marco Battaglini –
126 x 178cm
“Nosce te ipsum”
“Persevera, per severa, per se vera.”
