happybrico

Twentyfive years of artistic collaboration. Twentyfive years of patient research and investigation into the language of sculpture. Perino & Vele, the duo from Campania that has always played and teases with the ability of observers to recognize in their sculptures a reference to their everyday reality, to the objects that surround them, to the situations they trigger, trying to show them in a new, iconic yet ironic light at the same time.

Once again, the essential mean for their creation is the papier-mâché. 

For Perino&Vele the sculptural process must be seen as deconstruction and reconstruction of the matter: from the pulping of paper, an operation necessary to produce papier-mâché, to the reshape of itself, lending it to further forms and meanings.

The social complaint has always been present in the work of the artists and here in this project this is particular clear. One of the main characteristics of contemporary society is the increasingly frequent tendency to promote and encourage the consumerist act, the desire and the need to purchase, with the idea that the possession of a new object can easily be transformed into a source of happiness or a new opportunity.

The constant increase of Eastern stores and warehouses open 24/24, which perfectly suited to the frenetic rhythms of today's society are filled with objects emptied of their semiotic value, which become a tempting false desire/need even to the most for the most reflective consumer. So, also the location where Perino&Vele work, their studio, is full with bought and used objects. The artists observe and act in their space and interlace a set of tools that are transformed into subjects of investigation as well as becoming protagonists of the new project here presented: HappyBrico.

Walking trough the rooms of the gallery we can see 5 sculptures, 14 drawings and a wall painting. 

The objects, found and collected from their studio: a toy, a wrench, a drink and a hammer, they are are plastically translated into subjects for the creation of compositions of drawings and sculptural works, which they themselves define still life. The series of sculpture Madeforyou, 2019, which represent rocking horses, they refer with a semantic connotation to the Greek word mechos, from which the terms macchination, artifice originate. It is the representation of a device with the purpose of deception, a trap set with cunning, as is the Trojan horse, to attract to itself impulses hidden by the desire to buy.

Analysing the complex relationship among the individuals, the objects and the surrounding area, the artists thought colours and sculptural shapes contextualize and characterize the use and purpose, for the single human being as well as for the society, of the objects. The iconographic research while expanding is trying to capture in the product a source of pleasure, feelings and emotions. This exhibition aims to be a formal research on the values that animate our society, on tastes, passions, feelings and shared attitudes.

All this is moved by the desire of a will of a confrontation with a new and complex practice, a consumerist practice in which natural needs give way to desires that compensate the need for appearance, approval and identification in specific social groups. The consumer machine never stop, it never stop moving with seduction to feed new desires that overlap with old ones. According to this logic the shadow of the object becomes first of all a symbol of a subjective desire in which a possible and much coveted personal happiness is foreshadowed.