Driveslave _ The Art of Luca Merendi Stanghellini Perilli

Born in '74, he attended the IED – European Design Institute in Milan addressing to web design, digital illustration & painting and sculpture. Then it was the turn of advertising and there he began his career as an Art Director. He is one of the bewitched by drawing, painting and llustration, but at the same time he mitigates this vertigo with the use of computers. He creates a positive and productive distance between subject and object through the use of digital manipulation. The peculiarity of his work lies in walking the dangerous line between painting, digital painting, advertising and illustration. His creations have a surreal flavor and equivocal scent where the boundary between painting, collage and photography is very thin. The images of human figures made ​​object tickle memories of voyeuristic image processing a là Toccafondo, McKean or even Bacon. Yet this hybrid universe made of quotations remains free from mannerism and mystifying attempts, purified by the inner meaning of things that appears relating subject and title.

Merendi is part of that small category of artists that still follows the world of the semanteme ignoring that hollow habit of the “untitled” piece which is so common nowadays. He is a semantic romantic and he believes in the signifier and in the signified. Without giving himself the dangerous knight of meaning, he undergoes to the risk of naming. This is an insidious magical practice that any parent should know: to give a name and to assign a destiny, even to his own work.

"What can I say about my work? From awful sketches I go through the shot of some pictures, using a digital camera. The first take is not so accurate, given that of this first rough will remain almost nothing. My computer will do the hardest part of my work. Using Photoshop I overpaint layers to original sketches and pictures. Layer by layer, changing contrasts, nuances, patterns and I put together new bricks in this digital collage. Most of all I use transparencies, so that who looks at my illustration can see a bit of all the sources I used. From the thought of a single painting which as been for years my mark now it often flows in a serie of paintings with its burden of meaning. I love the single piece, even if in a larger serie, with its background and its burden of emotions. I paint my fears and I always get surprised when I see frightened grins depicted on the faces of those who look at them. I've not entirely accepted that my fears are everyone's fears."