Was My Father
Painting for me is my first love. An important, pure love. The sculpture is my lover, my artistic betrayal to the painting that voluptuous and sensual lover that inspires different emotions, which strike prohibited chords.
The reinforced cement, the concrete, was created two thousand years ago by the Romans. It tells a millennia-old story, one full of amphitheaters, bridges and roads that have conquered the ancient and modern world. Now, concrete is a synonym of modernity. Everywhere you go, you find a concrete wall: there’s the modern man in there.
The artistic question was an obvious one for me: if man brought art to the streets in order to make it accessible to everyone, why not bring the urban to galleries and museums? With respect to my painting process, when a painting has completely dried off, I brush it with a particular substance that not only manages to unite every color and shade, but also gives my artwork the shininess and lucidity of a poster (like the ones we’ve all had hanging on our walls).
For my concrete sculptures, I use my personal clothing. Through my artistic process in which I use plaster, resin and cement, I transform these articles of clothing into artworks to hang. The intended effect is that my DNA and my memory remain inside the concrete, so that the person who looks at these sculptures is transformed into a type of postmodern archeologist, studying my works as urban artifacts.
Mario Loprete is an Italian artist. Painting is his first love, and making concrete sculptures is his betrayal to the painting.