“We accept you, one of us! Gooble Gobble!” – Freaks
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Freak Show. In 1932, the dreamer Tod Browning directs a group of freaks in a flick that, over time, becomes a milestone in the cinema de genre. Why such a success? Because it’s the bizarre that makes your head twist while on the street. It’s the paradoxical that insinuates the most interesting questions into the men’s minds. It’s like that for me. It’s like that for us. It’s like that for Paolo Gonzato.
. Of his being authentic and then an artist. With the series of works Out of Stock in 2012 he fiercely reaffirms the concept.
With L’Egolatra in 2014 he clarifies the human beings’ fundamental need of being the center of an universe, an intimate and together shamelessly public one.
His art is obsession. The obsession generates a disorder that becomes the rule. The rule is no past or future, but – thanks be to heaven! – only present.
Fucking Young! – A definition for art, if a definition can be given.
Paolo Gonzato – Anomaly, realism is the impossible.
FY! – What was it in the past and, above all, what is it in 2015?
PG – It’s just the same thing. Art is a continuous aesthetic rolling of contents and it is always able to arrive before any other channel. Art is made of visionary subtleties, special errors and contradictions, it’s a screen for innovative projections. Despite being the product of an advanced elite, today art has a popular consumption, it represents the new religion of the beauty through which you can ennoble yourself and believe; sometimes it’s also funny.
FY! – Milan is the city where you live and create. How and how much does it influence your work? And, instead, what about the places around the world that host you so often?
PG – Milan might be grim but it is generous. This city is a condenser of creativity and, now more than ever, has started to challenge innovation again. After a period of hibernation, it’s the city in which to stay. Art, design and fashion are all here with the possibility to mingle and make a new jam… Then, there are two airports giving the chance to fly elsewhere and find places that can intrigue and surprise you unexpectedly. Tokyo and Japan in general have represented my favorite destinations thanks to their alien vision; but also Miami. I love palms, palms are perfect… Indeed, all the plants are.
FY! – From the second half of the ’90s to now: almost twenty years of career. From Crash, the first official exhibition, to Out of Stock, one of the latest solos. How has your modus operandi changed and what’s the link between the boy of then and the man of today?
PG – Probably nothing has changed… When I was a child, I always used to ask myself: “I wonder…what will I be in 40 years?”. Now that I know the answer, my goals are amplified to the extent that the opportunity to express and satisfy working desires implements with any new collaboration. It’s as if all the things you have done go and stratify: paintings, machines, shoes, sculptures, photos, playboy, a nonprofit in a basement… a museum… All summed up in a bizarre, almost drunk depth! It’s a game that changes while you’re playing…
FY! – If I say APalazzo Gallery, what do you reply?
PG – A XVIIth century’s palace, the headquarters of the gallery that represents me: a stimulating and dynamic mutual collaboration. As for LOLLIPOP-UP, it’s an ongoing and changing project about the expanded design concept that I carry on with the gallery and was born as a three months’ temporary-store in a former perfumery (hence the name). Now, it’s perennial and housed in the historic space of the APalazzo.
FY! – It’s not Right, The Gheisha’s painting, L’isola delle rose, Gift, L’egolatra. They are just some of your works. Among these, and the other ones, is there any which you feel more connected to or that better represents your vision as an artist?
PG – The most unusual artworks are the ones that I would choose to tell about me, leaving out the most successful ones. The freaks are the ones that make your head turn, the ones that make you ask interesting questions. The bizarre artworks are the ones that decide the directional changes, they are healthy red herrings that prevent you from being the boring stereotype of your artistic identity. If they are wrong, they will be perfect
FY! – Once you said that you’re fascinated by the culture of the “loser”, the outsider. Why? How do you succeed in decoding his/her role in society and giving it sense through your work?
PG – Anything that is considered “right” is already long dead. Affirmative attitudes, absolute safety is too obvious for my standards. What thrills everybody is just for them. “Everybody” is the evil. Anomaly is the unconscious. Obsession is fresh air. I just focus myself in practising this credo with materials, colors and dynamics. Making holes with a cigarette on a garbage bag or covering with gold a trunk emerged from a floodef valley to make a dam, freezing the waste of a dinner on the terrace, stealing a destroyed bicycle, mixing jars with the champagne with which you got drunk and an endless series of pictures made of leftovers from previous paintings… Can I give you the idea?
FY! – At the same time, you feel attracted by figures of an essential simplicity, as the rhombus. However, it is a geometric simplicity that hides an overwhelming power, evocative of an inner and outer chaos. Is art, yours, order or disorder? Is it rule or transgression?
PG – Art is disorder because order is only an improbable disposition of elements. It is about the laws of the entropy that is a measure of disorder. It follows that disorder is the rule. Out Of Stock, the series of rhombus, is the consequence: to fill time and space with random geometric cutouts of colors chosen by others, by categories of people who have nothing in common but a, let’s say, stupid denominator – like “the guys with who I had sex” or the “waiters” – and using cartons dirty with traces left by previous paintings as a support. I keep these rules rigorously. I have no interest in giving the specifications for each single work.
FY! – In your opinion, is there a connection between art and fashion?
PG – I think that fashion is a consequence of art. Art shapes a society and defines the taste for a circle of people who translates it by dressing and interpreting with more commercial signs what would not be otherwise understandable. Fashion is an innovative translation. I may even stay naked but I always need to know something new. This one is the fashion which I am interested in, that makes me curious.
FY! – What’s about BEART?
PG – It’s a new website project curated by me. Starting from now, my work will land on the web via a digital platform that will live through specific artistic contents, renewed on a monthly basis and through partnerships with companies and designers. The objects and the artworks will be made exclusively for it, which will represent a creative hub that will grow over time. Not just an artist’s website but a work of art itself, be a part of this new art project, donate!
FY! – In your next future…
PG – Neon, carpets, performances, mayonnaise, wallpaper, nature, collaborations, ceramics, simplicity, vodka-lemons, collecting, 100 further square meters, delegating, gathering everything in a place, a fur coat, museums.
FY! – As usual, our last question. What is really FUCKING YOUNG!?
PG – Dreaming.
