Pop and Surreal in the works of Alessandro Calizza

Alessandro Calizza born in 83, he is one of the most influential artists on the Roman contemporary scene: since 2012 has been able to amaze audiences and critics moving between art evenings, solo shows and performances both in Italy and abroad. Whether it concerns ancient Greek statues in "liquefaction" or architectural works infested with fluorescent vines, his work moves between distinctly pop codes and atmospheres of surreal taste and is imbued with a delicate artistic-sociological reflection.

Reflection often critical, which concerns the theme of identity crisis in our post-modern society, a crisis that involves art in a sensitive way, questioning its raison d'être and generating quite a few questions. This process evidently affected Calizza's artistic sensibility, which year after year brought into focus the dangers of progressive degeneration and destruction of art, placed as a mirror of our society.

Here's what the artist said a FIRST Art.

Calizza, let's start right away with a big question: what does making art mean to you?

“Really a big question. I think I have two alternatives to answer: a stream of consciousness of a thousand pages or a couple of aphorisms I wrote some time ago to try and give me an answer. I'll try the second one.

Making Art is being the world I live. Everything inside me is too much. It has to come out. Making art is making politics. That politics that hasn't given up on beauty."

Then a more trivial question, when and why did you start?

“I can't tell. There could be many beginnings: the first drawing, the first graffiti in '96, the first canvases where I tried to express an idea, the first exhibition and the confrontation with the art world totally unknown to me...
I've always felt "out of place", like myself trying to walk paths that weren't mine, sometimes beautiful, but in which after more or less time I lost all interest.

Instead, when I'm working in my studio, I feel everything resonates just right. I almost don't perceive the physical limit that divides me from the work I'm working on or from anything else. Here in this case I feel I have "my place" in the order of things. I don't know when it started, what is certain is that I realized not being able to imagine any plan B. "

Do you think there is a need for more art in Rome and Italy in the XNUMXst century or has the situation improved in recent years?

“It is a complex situation, also in relation to the many new possibilities that everyone has to convey their work. As with any other area, globalization and the internet have given everyone the opportunity to say and define what they want. Today, more than ever, an excellent public relations job is enough and you manage to be indicated as the (expiring) future of Italian art. I think there are too many exhibitions and works around, but I don't know how many of them are art, at least according to my idea of ​​art. They are so fashionable decorative works that not give any nuisance, that have no critical or non-critical component force you to think.

Art, the real one, is a mirror (both social and personal) and many have neither the desire nor the courage to look straight into each other's eyes. Facing the madness of this era requires energy and you hardly ever have the strength to do it, better to ignore it and get distracted in front of a beautiful useless canvas. Luckily there are so many really talented artists, but on the one hand the system itself which is precisely defined by very different equations from that talent=success, on the other a deleterious attitude of strong competitiveness between the artists themselves, make that being able to have a stimulating comparison between the actors of the art world is very difficult. So in summary yes, I think there needs to be a lot more art and less decoration for the rich."

What usually drives you to create a work and how do you get inspired?

“Everything can inspire, it depends on the state of consciousness in which we live and express reality. My drive to create a work arises from the need to say something, almost regardless of the awareness that there is someone listening or not. I feel the urgency to tell and give shape to dynamics in which we are immersed on a daily basis but which are often difficult to define, especially when we experience them every day without the possibility of stopping. It's like being on a treadmill traveling at top speed, there's no time to ask questions or look around, you just have to run with your head down otherwise you'll be thrown away.

The art is taking the time to stop and reflect. What I want to communicate is my vision of things; my concern for the direction our age seems to have taken. There is a need to go back to living reality with more awareness. We believe we live in an immutable system, therefore inevitable and to be accepted without discussion, while it is a very precarious balance, it would take very little to bring everything down and maybe try to rebuild it differently.”

After various artist residencies, a daring collective performance at the Maxxi, ancient engravings retouched with watercolours, sculptures restored and enhanced with golden glue, after having organized evenings dedicated to art in Rome, created sets for music videos and theater companies and participated in city ​​projects for artistic redevelopment, what are your plans for the future?

“It's true, it was a period full of satisfactions. I just returned from New York where I was a guest with my Stoned exhibition of the Another Place – New Mental Landscapes project created by Contesta Rock Hair. A really good experience. I have also recently taken over a second studio, still in San Lorenzo near my studio/home; I share it with Lulù Nuti, a very good artist who lives and works between Paris and Rome.

The most important appointment will surely be my next personal exhibition at an important Museum that I love very much; after the exhibition held at the Museum of Classical Art in Rome I am enthusiastic about being able to organize this exhibition, it will be the perfect way to deepen and make more complete the discourse on identity and society that I have been pursuing in my works for years now. For the moment, however, I can't say anything else, and not to create who knows what expectation, but simply because we are still defining the details of the project and I'm superstitious!"

Since some titles of your exhibitions are not so reassuring, for example “Carne Fresca”, “Global Warning”, “Oh Sheet!” or "Athens is Burning", what future do you hope for Art in general and our contemporary society?

“Art has always found a way to survive itself and those who proclaim themselves sovereign, and will continue to play its magnificent role in the order of things, so I would say that we shouldn't worry too much about this. Quite different, however, is the case for our society. I find the level of dehumanization and cultural stupidity to which we have been brought day after day in recent decades disturbing. The majority of people she is frustrated and unhappy, lives lives that don't satisfy her but she goes straight on resigned or as if she had ten more lives to live and in which to finally redeem herself.

Here too the speech could be really long. I think a new awareness is needed, to rediscover that we are all part of a single humanity, which should take care of itself and not digest itself as it is doing. In this, art can really do a lot: it is politics that determines people's lives, but it is the people themselves who can change politics and whoever decides for them; and this change can only pass through culture and the choice to become an active part of this transformation.”