Graduated in industrial design, Stefano Perrone works and shares his life between Milan and Paris (POUSH). Until April 27th, he’s presenting his solo-show at the Ribot Gallery in Milan, untitled “Stunning Free Images to Use Anywhere”.
As the visitors enter the room, he is having his feet on the ground and his head in the clouds. From the spring grass texture to the blue sky, the sight from the window of a plane offers a different perspective on the environment… an invitation to travel. The human presence, as much as the viewer of the exhibition, is just suggested… an observator of nature into a picture… undisturbed and quiet.
Speaking about pictures, the first impression of a photorealistic landscape fades as the viewer notices filigranes and… in a certain way… errors of perception… troubled vision. The grass is no longer a hill but a texture… ready-to-use… copy-paste… decontextualized… “Anywhere”. The clouds become a sample… a picture among pictures… a database or stock photography. Scrolling the internet has become a new sightseeing… an horizon of pixels… where the background can be removed… interchangeable realities. The canvas is literally forming “windows”… screenshots or png… Questioning the relation of the viewer with the environment as much as with the image in itself. “Free to use”… “Anywhere”… the lines, logos and signature appear like a new layer, a pattern on this promise of freedom and utilization. From 2D to 3D, the watermark invades space and the viewer could even become a part of this new picture… digitized… copyrighted.
In this context, who owns the ground or the sky… who owns the flowers and the air… The perspective on the outside world as much as on the inside of the Internet becomes egocentric… and commercial. The most innocent contents become a territory of law and revendication… trademarked. Could the viewer pay a fee for the original version?… Could the blurry mask be removed after acquiring the rights to see the whole picture?… As the viewer dives a little bit more into the exhibition, he finds himself in front of an accumulation of narcissus. More or less naive or realist, this field of yellow flowers on screen appears like the result of a research with a keyword… the ultra-abundant information as an answer to every question. Can you show me a Narcissus? Here you go in every possible shape and variations!
Online, the flowers grow with water-marks… a new element. But as the flowers bloom in front of the viewer’s eyes, it almost feels like they look at him… the narcissus becomes figurative in a way and all the flowers could as well be a gallery of portraits and faces… selfies… of a narcissistic time. Here, in the basement, maybe the viewers sees his own existence as data… at least… in 300 dpi.
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ABSTRACT MIMESIS 