Through raw concrete sculptures, Mario Loprete has cemented himself as an artist to watch
Italian artist Mario Loprete has, for over two decades, been sharing his artistic reading of hip hop by painting the theme, artists, and its role in our daily lives. His work has been exhibited in various public and institutional spaces in Holland, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S.A., attracting the attention of public and private collectors. In 2020, artist Snoop Dogg shared Mario’s painting of the icon on his Instagram profile, allowing him to reach new audiences and heights.
Since, Mario has taken on a new artistic project - creating sculptures out of concrete.
Of the inspiration behind this new venture, he says: “Painting is my first love. An important, pure love. Creating a painting, starting from the spasmodic research of a concept with which I want to send a message to transmit my message, it’s the base of my painting. However, I sensed that something was missing in my work, a spark that would detonate the conceptual bomb I carried inside. That special something was absent. Like a lightning bolt, the idea struck me: the only common element in every part of my artistic project was the substance that held everything together: concrete.
“So, I replaced the canvases with reinforced concrete supports to highlight even more realistically the connection with the urban style. The sculpture is my lover, my artistic betrayal to the painting. That voluptuous and sensual lover that gives me different emotions, that touches prohibited cord.”
For his concrete sculptures he uses items of his own personal clothing, including those he wore during the pandemic. Throughout his artistic process he utilises plaster, resin and cement to transform them into artworks to hang, refining this process through years of research and experimentation.
He says: “My memories and my DNA remain concreted inside, transforming the person who observes the artworks into a type of post-modern archaeologist that studies my work as though they were urban artefacts from a remote past. I like to think that those who look at my sculptures created in 2020 -2022 will be able to perceive the anguish, the vulnerability, the fear that each of us has felt in front of a planetary problem that was Covid 19... under a layer of cement there are my clothes with which I lived this nefarious period. I took inspiration from the items that survived after the 2,000-year-old catastrophic eruption of Pompeii, capable of recounting man's inability to face the tragedy of broken lives and destroyed economies.”
Why concrete? Mario explains: “Reinforced concrete was created two thousand years ago by the Romans. It tells a thousand-year history, full of amphitheatres, bridges and roads that have conquered the ancient and modern world. Now, concrete is synonymous with modernity. Everywhere you go you find a concrete wall: modern man is in there. The artistic question was obvious to me: if man brought art to the streets to make it accessible to everyone, why not bring the urban into galleries and museums? I like to think that those who look at my sculptures ask themselves questions, which they can answer by drawing on their educational, cultural and artistic experience.”
Discover more of Mario’s work and his upcoming exhibits here:
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