Mario's advice, Exhibition Space Revolution, Palermo

closed

Mario's advice:

RAISE THE FLAG

From 15 June to 15 September 2024

Space Revolution

Piazza della Rivoluzione, 9, Palermo

Closed today: open tomorrow at 19:00

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The BLACK FLAGS by Mario Consiglio, thick, material, give shape to the epideictic phrases of Davide Banda, with words cutting like blades, only apparently softened by the poet's labor limae. They are anarchist slogans that tell the distortions of the contemporary world, denouncing, without unnecessary hypocrisies, how little we are willing to learn from the mistakes of the past. Please policeman do not kill my son on this sunny day confronts us with the thought of a mother, abandoned to the idea that her son may face a merciless fate, made even sadder by the lack of mourning on a rainy day. The drama of a mother is overlapped by a social urgency, the memory of the thousands of deaths that occur every year at the hands of the police, not only American. The soft, almost reassuring, strokes of the individual letters almost clash with the choice of a total black color. But the black color, bearer of ominous messages, also becomes the banner of total expressive freedom, of a thought that runs off the rails. On the engraved phrases, dense like bitumen, the light flows as in fabrics moved by the wind. They are the shadows of our past on the present, indelible grease stains on our consciences. Although some words hold a deep sense of sweetness, in these contemporary epigraphs there is something negative, lapidary, that we instinctively recognize. We perceive the echo of a perverse ideological grip, worthy of the worst empire, which drags us from a dark past to a obscurantist future, from a brother drone to an enemy drone. In a story of repeating horrors, indeed, we must guard against ourselves, avoid succumbing to the flatteries of a dictatorship full of false certainties. Keeping the promised futures contains deep hopes, but at the same time speaks to us of continuous defeats and the failure of previous generations that have not been able to build for the new ones. But what is the future really? No matter how much well-being can be achieved, no matter how many hoped-for goals can be reached, for an individual the future is death. The future, therefore, can only be defined within the scope of a civil consciousness, of a community growth project. By intertwining image and text, Mario Consiglio and Davide Banda invite us to reflect on the present, on a period of mourning marked by wars, famines, and political promises made and never kept. This is where the need arises to return to large-scale works, to poster-sized dimensions, capable of shaking even the most indifferent souls. The works, entirely handmade without the use of lasers, reconnect to the artist's early works; an art steeped in punk and underground culture where black is the aesthetic expression of a generational malaise.