Aguinaldo Perrone identifies as an artist whose primary influences are commercial adverts and posters—and, more to the point, the street itself. As he recently wrote about his art featuring the Italian urban landscape, a canyon smothered with a panoply of ads: “[O]ne on top of the other, one behind the other, vertical, churned out by myriads of windows, the buildings of large urban centers become, for advertising, the real world to conquer. Behind those windows, products are identical a hundredfold while outside everything machine-guns slogans: on public transportation, on bus shelters, on walls. The sharp noises of large neon spaces turn on and off the compulsion to possess what is indispensable. It is the illusion of a moment. The home is the place where real consumption takes place, the place where needs are born, the box where advertising hides to never come out again.”
In his work Perrone has paid homage to Italy’s (and Europe’s) master poster makers, notably Fortunato Depero, through reinterpretations. Most recently he’s used advertisements in his paintings that are currently exhibited at the Museo Nazionale Collezione Salace in Trevis, Italy, titled Ditelo Col Cartellonismo! (Say it with Billboards!) curated by Elisabetta Passqualin and Theirry Devynck. The exhibition on view through July 6 is a 21st-century approach to the pre- and post-pop sensibility that regards everyday packaging, logos and ads as the nexus of folk and high art.
“There was a time when advertising was an artform that decorated cities with its neon signs, posters and wall affiches,” Perrone wrote to me in an ongoing correspondence. “Many of those signs are becoming ‘ghost signs.’ That is the true inspiration of my paintings, coming out from those advertising landscapes. My love for them.”
The post The Daily Heller: Presenting Poster Pop Paintings appeared first on PRINT Magazine.