Pep Marchegiani - Untitled - SGRE002

The work draws on a pop aesthetic in its use of famous or mass-produced images and their pictorial reworking. Pop Art emerged in the United States in the second half of the 20th century as a result of artists' interest in and critique of the contemporary "consumer society." All expressions of Pop Art presuppose a sort of double bond with the world of consumerism and mass media. On the one hand, the artwork is reduced to a mere consumer product, thanks to the use of advertising language in the works and their serial reproduction through mechanical processes. On the other, the mass-produced images themselves become works of art, as a more genuine and truthful expression of the new society and thanks to the artist's recontextualization.

The research of artist Pep Marchegiani, in several works such as this one, is directly connected to the influences of Pop Art. First and foremost, the composition centers on the massified image of a celebrity par excellence, Totò, who stands out at the center of the painting like a timeless icon. The actor's portrait is executed with an elegant and essential language inspired by the aesthetics of advertising and design. The entire surface of the work is then recontextualized by the artist's subjectivity. Marchegiani conducts this operation on a pictorial plane, and in this sense he pushes his gestures to the limit, deliberately smearing the image and transfiguring it into a decidedly more expressionist context. In this case, the pop icon of Totò is traversed by calligraphic strokes and extremely balanced drippings of color.

Pep Marchegiani was born on October 22, 1971, in Atri, Abruzzo. He began his career at a young age in Chieti in the late 1980s, collaborating with textile entrepreneur Wicky Hassan, owner of the Energie and Miss Sixty brands, who instilled in him a passion for contemporary art. In the 1990s, he embarked on a career as an independent fashion designer, collaborating with various national and international brands. Since 2005, he has combined his work as a fashion designer with that of an independent artist, organizing a solo exhibition in Pescara. In 2010, he definitively left the textile industry to dedicate himself exclusively to art.

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