Eroticism in Luca Loreti’s illustrations

Eroticism in Luca Loreti’s illustrations

Giorgia Massari · 1 month ago · Art

Crude and explicit, Luca Loreti‘s (1990) erotic illustrations strike the audience with an ironic and dramatic language. The Milanese visual artist and cartoonist focuses his research on investigating the world around him and the relationship that we have with it, focusing in particular on the sexual sphere.
The comic book format, allows Loreti to deal with his own obsessions: sex, mechanics, food, history and punk music, but also to talk about what doesn’t directly involve his private life.

Luca Loreti’s works – pictorial, sculptural and illustrative – are often monochromatic and with flat backgrounds, several influences emerge including those from the tattoo’s world and Japanese Ukyo-e prints. The simplicity of the forms and their immediate recognition are the methods by which he represents the subjects in the works: sex toys and physical elements that refer to eroticism and the sexual sphere. Among other subjects, we frequently find the cat and the mouse, characters inspired by “Itchy & Scratchy”, the Simpsons cartoon.

Loreti’s first comic book, titled IO has recently turned one year old and in the last weeks has been the protagonist of several drawing sessions organized in Turin and Milan, where he will be featured on Thursday, Feb. 23, at Vetra Recicli in the Navigli area, from 7 p.m. In IO strikes the initial irony but also a violent psychology in which the reader can see himself and compare his own personal experiences related to sexuality.
Collater.al asked Luca Loreti a few questions to learn more about his research.

What was your first approach to eroticism?
Fortunately or unfortunately, pornography. Sex and eroticism have always been a part of my life, the attraction I have for this world has spilled over spontaneously into my research and work.

Does censorship hinder your work? 
I think I am my own first censor, I have never had a particularly negative response to my works, maybe they interest some people more and others less. Certainly, King Koala Press had the courage to invest in my first long comic book work, it was a leap of faith for both of us.

The character on the cover of your comic book IO – who is constantly dealing with his sexuality – looks like you, somehow there is something about you and your personal experience? 
When I started thinking about the character, I wanted something universal. I wouldn’t say that the stories in IO are my direct experiences, but rather are the result of my own reasoning, thoughts or intimate stories of other people. IO looks like me because maybe I am not that good at drawing and the easiest thing to do is to draw what you are most familiar with, there is definitely so much of me in it. 
I define the protagonist of the comic as an alien, a boy without a nose, with a flame instead of hair, these big holes instead of eyes that the reader keeps diving into, an alien discovering the world.

In your illustrations, sex toys recur frequently, is there a specific motivation why you are interested in depicting them?
I depict sex toys because I think they are a very interesting and useful tool and market. As I was trying to explain before I wanted a work that told the real life of people. Personally, in my private life, hardly use sex toys and you know what I think? What a pity!

In the past month you have held several drawing live sessions in contact with the public. Tomorrow, February 23, 2023, at Vetra Recicli in Milan, there will be a new meeting where people can see you at work and meet you personally, tell us more about these meetings.
Vetra Recicli is a venue on the Navigli that has already collaborated with King Koala and has the publisher’s entire catalog for sale. Like the other times, I will sit on a small table making dedications on the comics that will be bought and with a pad of paper I will draw something. By “something” I mean the only things that I can draw: cat, mouse, cock and pussy.

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Adapting and then escaping with Zazzaro Otto’s works

Adapting and then escaping with Zazzaro Otto’s works

Giorgia Massari · 2 days ago · Art

Milan’s ArtNoble gallery opened yesterday, March 30, 2023, the solo exhibition of artist Zazzaro Otto (1988) entitled “Traslochi Heimat s.r.l.” with a text by Bruno Barsanti. The curious and unusual title of the exhibition best explicates the antithesis presented by the sculptural works on display.
Heimat is a German word that refers to belonging to a place or, even better, to the feeling of being at home, leading back to a family dimension. Heimat is also the name of a moving company – s.r.l. to be precise – introducing in this way the concept of displacement, in contrast to the homely aspect heralded by the German term. Thus, a conflicting aspect emerges between what should be stable and what is in motion. This leads metaphorically back to the existential journey, to an intimate and personal sphere related to a warlike aesthetic, referring to an inner war. Zazzaro Otto’s works deal with concepts such as adaptation, change and danger with different nuances and, likewise, the mechanisms implemented by human beings in these specific circumstances.

An early metaphor is present in the work “I don’t know how, but I’m taller, it must be something in the water,” comparing a motorcycle to the path of growing up. The work evokes a conflict between childhood and adulthood. The former symbolized by the “bicycle” shape (typical of children) and the colorful little house it carries on the back, as well as the snacks in the small trunk; the latter, on the other hand, is expressed by warlike elements, such as the axe placed on the side. A series of contradictions, made up of “weapons and snacks,” make explicit the difficulties of growing up and how it is often unconscious, rapid, and unexpected.

A second emblematic work is “SuperPleasureEmergencySofa (My Arm for a Sofa),” which visually depicts the concept of survival and adaptability. Indeed, Zazzaro Otto makes a portable sofa-bed, which attempts to become a home through the presence of household elements such as a lamp, alarm clock, and books. Conflict, however, is always present: while it attempts a relaxation, it also remains at attention, ready to leave and run away from danger.

Other works in the exhibition, such as the bronze helmets and wall-mounted works, emphasize “the idea that everyone is responsible for their own movement and transformation”- as Melania Andronic’s text reads.

The exhibition is on view until May 18, 2023 at 9 Ponte di Legno Street, Milan.

Courtesy by Zazzaro Otto and ArtNoble Gallery

Adapting and then escaping with Zazzaro Otto’s works
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Sarah Slappey represents the constraint of being a body

Sarah Slappey represents the constraint of being a body

Giorgia Massari · 3 days ago · Art

You enter your bathroom, ready to strip off the clothes that have accompanied you throughout the day, you are surrounded by shiny tiles and an intent light hits your naked body, highlighting all those flaws you will observe and hate. A mirror reflects the contents of your soul, the body that tells who you are and appears to others every day. It is the moment of confrontation, painful most of the time. The works in oil and acrylic on canvas by U.S. artist Sarah Slappey speak of this pain, suffering and anxiety to maintain-or rather, to try to achieve-those imposed standards of beauty.

Sarah Slappey | Collater.al

An interweaving of bodies, particularly limbs (feet and hands) stand out overbearingly against a grid background that leads right back to the bathroom environment and its typical tiles, creating a contrast between chaos and perfection. The hands and arms, distinctive elements of her production, are accompanied in her more recent works by feet and legs. These two elements create a further contrast: on the one hand the hands, soft and gentle, caressing and cuddling, on the other hand the feet, rough and overbearing, trampling, crushing. This is accentuated by the artist’s rendering of the latter, especially highlighting the veins and creases that are created on the back and sole. Both limbs are shiny, silky, hairless but with obvious scars, cuts, and drops of blood. They are penetrated by pins that pierce the fictitious skin, almost perfect in mannequin manners, making explicit the constant sacrifice enacted especially by women. Sarah Slappey does not actually refer to a particular genre but, elements such as beads, bows, hairpins and threads, clearly refer back to the female universe, resulting in autobiographical at times. Sleppey’s works contain a strong tension that oscillates between sensuality and brutality, seeking to overturn the typical representation of the female body that has always been dominated by men. The twists and touches reveal a sexuality that merges with restlessness, posing the viewer with the question “how do bodies feel?

Sarah Slappey | Collater.al
Courtesy by Sarah Slappey
Sarah Slappey represents the constraint of being a body
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Mass-media mutilation in Pablo Bermudez’s work

Mass-media mutilation in Pablo Bermudez’s work

Giorgia Massari · 4 days ago · Art

Artist Pablo Bermudez performs a mutilation, a disembowelment, a defacement of the pop image. Terms with a strong negative and bloody meaning but that best explicate the operation carried out by the Colombian artist on mass-media images. In fact, his action affects the advertising image proposed by fashion magazines, comics and newspapers in general, with the aim of sabotaging the message conveyed by brands, which hijack the masses’ thinking through advertisements and implicit messages, conditioning their consumption and therefore their thoughts and habits. Pablo Bermudez (1988) starts with the image of a magazine, often an icon, a model or model, or just as often the cover, without separating it from its container -the magazine- but keeping the whole object, making a kind of sculpture. With the use of a scalpel, Bermudez carves into the eyes or mouths of the characters, digging deep and at the same time depriving them of their identity, of what makes them human and therefore recognizable. In this way, the icons lose their personality, bringing out what lies within the pages: phrases, images and colors. By losing their connotations, they lose their function as vehicles. The subversion of the image is complete.

The viewer in this way is placed in front of a magazine that no longer needs to be leafed through but is opened from the inside, emerging outward in a three-dimensional manner. The filaments, clippings and paper tears create an explosion, giving dynamism to the work.
Pablo Bermudez performs a destruction of pop imagery, transforming images into other images. Destroying but at the same time creating. However, the destruction is not complete: the artist chooses to keep certain elements, such as the titles of the magazines – “Playboy,” “Batman” – or the rest of the subjects’ faces, thus creating a strong visual connection. The viewer immediately recognizes the manipulated element without being able to enjoy it, however, and thus is forced into reflection.

Mass-media mutilation in Pablo Bermudez’s work
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The subconscious and desires of a free body

The subconscious and desires of a free body

Tommaso Berra · 5 days ago · Art

Artist Wang Haiyang (1984) was struggling to express his feelings until his psychologist advised him to represent his unconscious through painting. Since then, the Chinese artist has been able to represent his vision of the outer and inner worlds, reworked through subjects born as metamorphoses of human bodies.
The inquisitiveness of the unconscious and psychology have remained a fundamental part of Wang Haiyang’s artistic production, which points straight to his own hidden desires and the most fantastic subconscious far from the real world.

Wang Haiyang | Collater.al

Wang Haiyang’s works reflect on existential themes that allow for social issues such as that of identity for example, depicted by twisting classical ideals of beauty. Frighteningly hairy, almost animal-like legs are thus depicted in graceful and elegant poses typically feminine. Language is another of the themes of these acrylic-on-canvas works, as is lust, evoked with precise elements referable to sexuality and eroticism or more metaphorically with the dialogue of the subjects with abstract, tangled and in contact with naked body parts.
The settings of the works are reminiscent of illustrations from science fiction comic books or cartoons, it feels like watching a scene from Little Chills but with a slight tinge that covers everything with eroticism.
Animation is another of the techniques Wang uses to represent his subconscious, and some of his works have won awards at international film festivals.

Wang Haiyang | Collater.al
Wang Haiyang | Collater.al
Wang Haiyang | Collater.al
Wang Haiyang | Collater.al
Wang Haiyang | Collater.al
Wang Haiyang | Collater.al
Wang Haiyang | Collater.al
Wang Haiyang | Collater.al
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