The kaleidoscopic and imaginative pop universe becomes an excuse, a solid wall of emotions against which every bubble breaks, feeble envelope of our truth and our lies. From the falsehood of art, bearer of absolute truth to the ephemeral beauty of star system, passing through the microcosm of interpersonal relationships, everything balances on a thin edge where every lie becomes precious ornament of the banal truth and the truth creeps between colored and elusive clouds. The daily ritual of cheating is powered by a compulsive energy that drives the human being to the amplification of its skills, to the denial of truth buried with the aim of preserving a love, lower the strength of the enemy, rise like an invincible and omnipotent organism. As the deadly drosera attracts its prey with its bright colors, the art of lying hides a sick black heart that beats in a seductive body with iridescent and gleaming clothes. Colors that dangerously charms everyone who watches at them.
Deception and art, the artifice and the great illusion. These concepts travel on parallel lines because the art contains the human will to change reality and the desperate attempt to imitate the nature of things. The artifice and the great illusion of fifteen minutes of fame are the engine inside the philosophy of Andy Warhol, a myth based on the symbols of the show business like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, powerful characters that conceal a fragile psychological profile. The artifice and the great illusion of Alejandro Jodorovskj, in his film Sacred Mountain he explodes the bubble of fiction revealing the to the spectator the entire movie set hidden behind the characters involved in the search of immortality, while a narration voice thunders:
“We came in searchof the secret of immortality And here we are…mortals, more human than ever. And this It is a film. Zoom back camera!”.
To better investigate this intricate interconnections between truth and falsehood, Roxy in the box walks along paths already beaten by the previously mentioned masters, disguised as a charlatan and a sacred shaman that wraps the artistic element in a cloak of illusion, confusing and enchanting the visual perception with tricks and burning realities. In the bubbles made by the sardonic and pungent artist, every face and every thing softly floats in the air, ready to explode releasing its real emotional content. A draw of cards that discovers the truth of the lie and the lie of the truth, accusing and summoning at the same time the two sides of the same coin. Nothing escapes this visual procedure, Roxy in the box presents two videos that show a false conversation in a chat and an irreverent dance that shows the artist and performer that blow incessantly and mutually bubbles of chewing gum that explodes on their faces revealing their own incommunicability. Visual elements that struggle in their lightness against the emptiness of a loving sentiment built on denied truths and hypocrisy. Provoking round shaped paintings as scented soap bubbles obscure the actual strength of ready made starlettes that collapse to the ground under the weight of their own celebrity and the art, the supreme bubble, lying helpless, slave to the figure of the artist no longer performer their ideas but modern business man.
A violent criticism, that hides behind the verbosity of its narcissism, a deep sense of appreciation for the aesthetic symbol of the artifice and the great illusion, the imaginary that conquest the popular masses.
The style of Roxy in the box is fast, immediate in the representation of shapes and colors that invade well delimited plains while maintaining a precise rendering. Tones are heated counterpoint to the monochrome solid figures in the foreground that link to the classics of American pop couture. A riot of shadows, and halftone masses bright the strokes that delineate the characters and create movement. The prospective cut is direct, in an alternation of detailed shots and extreme close ups emerging from the surface changing its physical boundaries. Fundamental component of each work is the verb, the slogan that reveals the real intentions of each character.
Roxy in the box, in its depiction of lie in the form of a candid bubble, does not limit its investigation to the search of the absolute truth but intends to recreate the mystical and magical moment where every spectator accepts impassive, enchanted and amused every trick or fiction that the spectacle of life shows right before his eyes.
Micol Di Veroli
installazione
acrilico su mdf
2008
LE VOILÀ MESSAGE IN A BUBBLE
video dvd
3’49”
2006
published Wednesday, 23 April, 2008 exibart
Le mille bolle blu*, a colourful and joyous song, sung by Mina, can definitively be put to rest. With Roxy in the Box, the tune has become a disco jingle, bubble soap has become chewing gum and dreams come true only for those who have a glamorous, sexy image yet manage to not be suffocated by the star dust in their self-constructed universe of vanity and fame.
Thus Roxy developed an occasionally autobiographical concept of art and love, truth and lies and illusions and falsehoods – which ties together four pictorial works, a video and a video-chat. The 42 circular acrylic paintings on panel comprising Message in a Bubble bloom from the walls like flower petals, in a circumscribed place where imagination becomes a medium for portraying persons and personages. The faces of those who resist, who have won personal battles and those beseeching a hug are in sharp contrast with the desire to share in Sharing bubbles, while for others The bubble has burst, the dream or enchantment of life has burst revealing all the difficulties of real life. Messages of love and hope are depicted by a couple blowing bubbles in Forever, marked by brief notes to be read like a publicity slogan, with graphics reminiscent of comics, in computer generated or commercial advertising typeface.
In other works, there are consecrated, recognizable faces, like that of Mario Merola in W il King and A royal bubble featuring Lady D adorned with a crown. The portraits are as forceful as prints, delineated in powerful black and accentuated by a background in orange, purple and green which fills in the void of Flusso di incoscienza featuring Britney Spears. For the artist, in this re-elaboration of the cover of “Max” magazine with the addition of various writings and an intravenous drip, the singer represents the reincarnation of a carefully constructed person, a deceptive art marketing operation gone sour. Spears’ bubble is Toxic, as perhaps prophetically foretold in one of her songs from a few years ago.
Roxy transforms the formal references of pop as she pleases, and has them slip away in the sweet little dicso song Le voilà, a video in which she appears together with performer Gennaro De Masco, a transformist and a sailor who changes places with her in front of wallpaper with very colourful flowers, voluptuously chewing bubble gum and blowing big bubbles in our faces. Sensuality and desire, fragility and bewilderment in a world where “pop imagination becomes a pretext, a solid wall of emotions which bursts every soap bubble, the fragile involucre of our truths and lies”, as Micol Di Veroli wrote. Phrases are repeated in Just Labial, with full lips parting, full of promise and refusal while pronouncing the key words “love, art, bubbles”.
A message, in the evanescent form of a bubble, is thrust into the sea of the Internet and finally gathered by Vissi d’amore vissi d’arte and Sono tutte bubbles, the video-chat protagonists. The former is a nondescript inhabitant of the bubble and the latter a disillusioned realist who ends up with bits of soap stuck to his shoes.
*(a thousand blue bubbles – a popular song from 1961),
Irene Tedesco
STILL BUBBLES
JUST LABIAL
IL FLUSSO DI INCOSCIENZA
acrilico su tela
180cm x 150cm
2008
Le icone e le molteplici mitologie quotidiane del pop. Un viaggio pittorico in cui il pathos della vita reale si mescola con l’ironia apparente del glamour da copertina. Il corpo falsato del divismo come catalizzatore energetico per filtrare la vita reale dell’artista trasformista.
Gianluca Marziani