Marinush: Plastic Eden

Jan 26, 2013

Plastic Eden

Francesco Simeti,

an Italian-born artist who lives and works in New York and Sicily, uses mass media images hidden in decorative pattern to point to a darker subtext. In New World, hunting decoys and motion-activated toy birds are nestled amidst a flourishing vine of hybridized Audubon illustrations, providing a tongue-in-cheek commentary on how technological interventions have diluted mankind's experience of nature.

INSTALLATION VIEW

At first the onlooker is distracted by the refined pattern, pleasing in its exterior appearance, thanks to how the reiteration of the image triggers a process of content remotion. Then his attention is attracted to the single images – scenes of war, queuing refugees, explosions, bombed-out areas, landscapes destroyed by natural disasters – cleverly orchestrated together with the decorative elements. Understanding the work is a gradual process, the identification of a linguistic code through its message, a metaphor of how we perceive the world and its fictitious representation, of our habit of accepting the news as represented by the media, of the inability to separate good from evil, truth from fiction, the true from the plausible.

SCENE DI DISORDINE E CONFUSIONE, 2010.

WASTELAND, 2011.

A corrupted landscape is staged, composed of historical representations of land and plants mixed up with plastic decoys animals and images of garbage.

Nature, disfigured by the exploitation of natural resources, trampled by genetic modifications in the name of industrialization and progress, rebels and regenerates itself, following a new model. (link)

Mother Of Pearl, SS/13

Mother of Pearl by Maia Norman is an innovative clothing label that blends art with fashion. The labels Spring/Summer 2013 collection features work by Italian artist Francesco Simeti (read the interview with Maya's Head Designer, Amy Powney).