Marco Battaglini places the elites and the nobility, the angels and the gods in the middle of the street. They live in full cohabitation with the poor and homeless in a daily landscape of besmirched suburbs. More than a simple aesthetic revival, Battaglini satirizes the cultural heterogeneity and the democratization of classes in a mirific way.
This multidimensionality of the being turns the models into something less ethereal and more palpable. Also more rebellious and subversive, with lewd features that perversely emphasize the paradox of the human condition. There is an obvious and direct correlation between two aesthetic forms which, despite having opposite traits and principles, are forced to coexist in the same scene. Artistic chronology is thus condensed at a time when academic classicism overlaps with a dubious aesthetic, such as an “immoral” fatality, misleading our perception and scrambling our senses.
The classic mannerisms and the delicacy of romanticism emerge in any suspicious alley, in a full coexistence with the provoking shock of pop culture and any unappealing graffiti as a background. A timeless social critique in the form of a manifesto.
Battaglini seamlessly integrates the classic figures into a modern background through the wise use of colour and palettes studied in detail. The various chromatic combinations of the background essentially rely on analog colours, with some details highlighted under complementary schemes. With that, the different eras are emphasized, and surprisingly, they associate with each other in apparent harmony and unification.
Through the outstanding use of tonal values and saturation, he recreates a dramatic and vibrant effect, in which the contrasts are heightened, reflecting the splendor of a new aura, in a differing expressiveness compared to the original. The glorious classical models, after tasting contemporaneity, are engulfed in a range of worldly situations, but, as the flesh is weak, and the temptation is strong, they happily exchange baroque for vulgarity or even for decadence.
Pedro Boaventura
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