Street Art Ways
OZMO
From 25 November 2018 to 1 March 2019
At Artrust SA, Via Pedemonte di Sopra 1, 6818 Melano CH.
From Monday to Friday, from 13.30 to 18. Saturday from 10 to 18.
Extraordinary opening, Saturday 3 and 23 March, 10-18.
FREE ENTRY
THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition, the first solo exhibition of Ozmo in Switzerland, presents a synthesis of the artist’s “indoor” production, with several never seen before and site-specific works.
In his works Ozmo mixes the contemporary language of urban art with elements ranging from classical art to popular, religious and advertising imagery.
His works are the result of a combination of images, symbols, icons, quotes, myths, in which sacred and profane, high culture and popular culture, overlap to present life to visual messages, to which the viewer is free to attribute meanings.
“What I do in my work, whether it is indoors or outdoors, is to draw on a vast array of symbols and icons, images that have gained power beyond their meaning. If an image strikes me, I take it and insert it into my works, recontextualizing it. The mechanism is not linear, the case also comes into play: sometimes it may take years before I can properly use an image”.
Ozmo
STREET ART WAYS
Street Art Ways is a series of exhibitions presented with the intention to deepen the work of some contemporary street artists who, tracing original and innovative personal paths, have created new directions of development for urban art.
«After having offered our public a broad overview of this movement from its origins to the present day with Street Art and Street Art 2, we thought it would be useful to propose a more detailed story. To start, we have focused on some contemporary artists, who stand out on the current scene for their reference to the tradition of the past and classical art».
Patrizia Cattaneo Moresi, Director of Artrust
GIONATA GESI aka OZMO
Gionata Gesi trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. After a brief period in the world of comics, he devoted himself mainly to painting and writing. Active on the Milan scene since the early 2000s, he is undoubtedly one of the pioneers of Italian Street Art and one of the first to enter the contexts of institutionalized art. Despite his favorite places of expression remain the alternative spaces of the social centers (famous for his monumental interventions at the Leoncavallo of Milan), in 2004, he is present at the Assab One exhibition curated by Roberto Pinto and in 2007, his works is also presented in the collective Street Art Sweet Art at the Pavilion of Contemporary Art. The growing fame also takes him abroad: in Gdansk, Moscow, London.
In 2012, he exhibited in the foyer of the Museo del ‘900 in Milan “Il Pre-Giudizio Universale”, an exhibition with his major large-scale installation works contextualized in the setting with an engaging live painting. He has also created an impressive wall painting of 300m on the terrace of the MACRO of Rome.
In the following years, important interventions in Italy and in the world followed: Chicago, Miami, Shanghai, New York, Paris, Pisa ans An Francisco.
Since 2015, he has been the artistic director of the “Wall in Art” international mural festival in Valle Camonica, famous throughout the world for its prehistoric graffiti, in a suggestive dialogue between rupestrian graffiti and contemporary murals.
For further info:
www.ozmo.it
IG: @ozmone
HOW TO REACH US
“OZMO, 1998 – 2018”
In parallel with the exhibition, the book “Ozmo, 1998 – 2018”, published by Crowdbooks and edited by Francesca Holsenn will be presented.
This book is halfway between an elegant and well equipped journey through images and a technical tool to fix and to know in depth the work of the artist and to get oneself, as well as conceptually, immersed in his art.
The volume recounts in over 240 pages, twenty years of Ozmo’s artistic career, with five critical texts that cover five fundamental themes of his work: illegality, symbol, system, image and relationship between pop and élite.
Photos
All rights reserved. Without authorization the reproduction and any other use of the works are forbidden, except for personal and private use.