history
twelve o’clock, May 14, 2021 – 08:48
The new work of street artist Dario Gaipa, made with torn posters
of Chiara Marasca
«It is as if the embrace and the warmth of Naples enveloped him, to say thank you, for his goals and the affection he shows us. Because this colorful carpet comes from the walls of the city, it is his skin“. Dario Gaipa looks at the collage in the center of which the figure of Dries Mertens stands out and tells how he was born. The bomber smiles beaming, clenches his right fist in victory and almost seems to come out of those same walls, absorbing energy from the bowels of the city.
Who is it
For some years now, Gaipa, 45, from Naples, wife, two children and a professional background as a digital graphic artist, has been stealing layers worn by rain and dust from the streets, giving them new life. «The tears, the colors, the lettering, they provoke an impulse in me: to take them away to attach them on a canvas and modify them ». Old advertising billboards, concert and film posters no longer in programming, election posters after elections are over, dead matter, in short, but ultimately alive. Street art in the crudest sense of the word. Pieces of paper intertwined in a graphic and conceptual blend, inspired by the technique with which Mimmo Rotella, the lift-off, and puts it in an urban and pop context. Which does not disdain icons or symbols, and focuses on both Vesuvius and coffee. Up to the novelty in mixed media born from the collaboration with the painter Maurizio Padula: the face of a protagonist of the history of Naples wrapped in the skin of the city on a 90 x 90 canvas. Titina De Filippo, Luciano De Crescenzo, Sophia Loren, Maradona, and today Mertens. And the desire, not even to say it, is that the blue champion can see the work that portrays him live, personally going to Llabbasc. «It is the small workshop we have opened at the end, as the name suggests, in a beautiful courtyard in Piazza Bellini. A sort of acronym, which stands for Social Content Artistic Workshop, but basically the word Llabbasc it is also the historical center seen from Vomero, where I grew up and still live ”, says Gaipa. With him, in this new adventure, are Padula and Carlo Sales, who makes ceramic sculptures.
shadow carousel
Dario Gaipa, collage with torn posters
Projects born in a pandemic
A project born in the hard period of lockdown, when restrictive measures and the elimination of social relations have compressed the field of action, but at the same time widened the gaze inwards. When the pandemic began, Gaipa had to literally dismantle what for some years had become his “office”, a stall in via Benedetto Croce where he exhibited his collages and from which he set out to hunt for old posters to be revitalized. «It was strange to observe how for a long time, over the last year, the walls of the city have not regenerated: no more concerts, no initiatives, even the advertisements have stopped for months. I lacked the lymph ». But not the ideas, nor the energy to reinvent oneself, for a while, too rider for organic deliveries. Then came the author masks, collages on fabric, in great demand in the months when the Ffp2 still weren’t the masters, and the series of ironic canvases in which famous people protect themselves by paying homage to their rivals (Steve Jobs wears the mask with the Microsoft logo and Bill Gates the one with the Apple, while John Lennon covers his mouth with the Rolling Stones tongue). “I felt the need to channel all the tension and fear felt in quarantine into an art project”, he says, “and the only rule I gave myself was to create something fun”.
The idea of the micro gallery “Llabbasc”
And finally it arrived Llabbasc. “We would like it to become a micro-art gallery because even if I strongly believe in social media, I firmly believe that human contact is indispensable”. In the meantime, however, thanks to the network, a Dali wrapped in the skin of Naples has just flown to Rotterdam, bought by the owner of an advertising agency. «A great satisfaction, for sure. But the best feeling “, concludes Gaipa,” will be seeing the tourists again in the historic center of Naples. Hopefully soon”.
May 14, 2021 | 08:48
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