A Plague Upon Us All: Marco Mazzoni

A plague is upon us.

 It punctures, penetrates; smothers, suffocates; a curse induced by the 'viral' invasions of 21st century life. The ability to visualise and see with our own eyes is refracted by the chaotic distractions of modern existence and the relentless infestation of new social media, all topped off by the hateful irony (go on, call it hypocrisy) that I vent these words from my Blogger blog - words which shall later be spread via the contagions of Facebook, Twit...I feel sick.

 Milan-based artist Marco Mazzoni has himself seen his exquisite glowing coloured pencil drawings spread like a pandemic thanks to the indomitable power of Tumblr, and whilst many other articles have chosen to simply regurgitate Mazzoni's respectable manifesto that his art "weaves a world based on Italian folklore, focusing on the female figures who, according to Sardinian beliefs, seduce, enchant, curse, and heal", Mazzoni's images are so saturated with intelligent metaphors to tell a story that to limit his work to such lazy and predictable responses ("Oh, it's all about nature, and like...repressed women?") is frankly an insult.

Yes - I see cycles of Nature, medicinal plants and pollinator birds drinking nectar, but I also see a Hitchcockian nightmare of humanity at the mercy of Mother Nature; I see the phallic stems reminiscent from the Edenic jungle of artist Carne Griffiths - yet here they are employed in a much more disturbing and pressing context: when a faceless figure appears to be submitted to an act of aggressive floral deep-throating, we may position that figure as potential 'victim'. Equally, there is the almost crawly sense of parasitic infiltration here - the human laid host to the blooming of some foreign organism at the expense of its own life.

There is a deceptive, violent sexuality to these pieces which is so perfectly balanced by Mazzoni's magical, fantastical colour palette and the sensuousness of his overall compositions that it is hard to ascertain whether these impossible creatures offer protection and decorative embellishment or a diabolical, pathogenic hi-jacking of the human body. Indeed, there is the horrifying sense of mankind utterly enslaved to the monstrous forces of the physical world here: either blinded by feathers or eyeless entirely, Mazzoni's figures are deprived of identity, as we are left desperately seeking a soul within an infinite void of what is either white-hot or death-black.

With his seductive female figures - perhaps femme fatales - laced with floral imagery and mythic creatures, it is easy to concentrate on the 'traditional' qualities of Mazzoni's work. But for me, there is something peculiarly modern and updated - dare I say 'fashionable' - about his aesthetic which inspires me to interpret his work in the symbolic context of more modern issues. For me, Mazzoni's hallucinatory scenes conjure a very real and present world plagued by paranoia, excess and violence; a world where relentless consumption has led to the consumption of the self and humanity is turned inside out in this peacock display of grotesque and sadistic absurdism. Nothing of the self is left but a blank white canvas patch where sight once existed.

http://marcomazzoni.tumblr.com/

FACEBOOK PAGE NOW LIVE

It's 2013 and I have finally mustered up the courage/arrogance to launch an official Jonny Burt Art Facebook page.  I will be posting and documenting all updates from there whilst also resuming blogging here about a wealth of fresh and exhilarating emerging artists from across the globe.

If you have followed the movement thus far and like the work I do, please make that 'like' a reality by pledging just 1 'Like' on the Facebook page. I will pay you all back in free artwork once I'm famous. And that's a promise. For now, it's all love.

Thank you for the support,

Jonny x

Losing Face: George Morton-Clark

We are all victims of rape. 

Whether crucified for our religion, race – our mental proficiency or our physical imperfections – we all suffer under the gauntlet of a normative, mediatised culture where happiness is defined in terms of exclusion and status. To quote the artist George Morton-Clark,

Society has evolved a paranoid state of mind because of our ever-tightening freedoms.

In less polite words, a violence is perpetrated against all of us; our freedom violated every day as we find ourselves choking defencelessly on the fumes of advertiser bullshit, corrupting our nervous system and rewiring it to produce a deformed image of how we should look in the frame of a 21st century society. 

With Morton-Clark, I imagine witnessing a hysterical obliteration of the human form, like a timebomb has finally detonated under the searing schizophrenic pressures we bear in our day-to-day existence. What we have left are disconnected, discarded remnants of being – unintelligible and uncoordinated elements that no longer offer real meaning. The human figure has been aggressively deconstructed and reconstructed into an attractive mess of nothingness and absurdity - and yet these works deliver such wholesome truths.

His female subjects thus provide a metaphor for the products and objectified images of reality that deserve to be ruined and mutilated. There's an interesting, homophonic collision between 'porn' and 'pawn' here: we are essentially all puppets that have been duped, manipulated, misguided; quite simply lied to in a pornographic culture where women, amongst many other things, are packaged into salacious commodities which promise everything but deliver nothing. 

To violate our freedom is perhaps one of the most serious crimes against our humanity. Morton-Clark reacts with work which is highly evocative and emotional. We have been cruelly tamed into a way of thinking, and the only way to reacquire freedom is to bite back with all we have left: savage revenge; degenerate, animalistic anarchy in the face of misplaced glossy Chanel logos.  Our only hope is to rape the system that has raped humanity.

We are immersed in a world of sin, a limitless hell on earth where anything goes, like a society that has been necessarily reset to its raw default settings. All barriers are broken; we have faceless pigs looming over equally faceless and maimed women, portraits of women gagging on the artist's most graphic tint of vermilion. This is not the glorification of human mutilation. It is the necessary destruction of those illusions of beauty churned out by a consumer monster that are anything but attainable.

But what's even more unsettling here is the almost cartoonish feel to the mutilation, like an old episode from the Itchy & Scratchy Show - you laugh but you do so with a seed of discomfort, no matter how hilarious the antics. It's as if these paintings have been unconsciously created by a child who’s discovered Crayola for the first time and has proceeded to make an uncensored mess. Of course, it's a well-thought out and beautifully crafted mess by Mr. M-C, but the aesthetic nonetheless - and rather brilliantly - hints at a disturbing landscape for the future generations.

The innocence (dare I say cuteness) conjured by this way of working is of course undercut with the artist's aggressive mark-making. Through his raw use of collaging, the faces of his subjects often tend to have smiles plastered onto them, a nice touch which inevitably echoes our own indoctrination in a society which conditions us to act against our will and instincts. Elsewhere, GMC's faces are scratched out, destroyed - or his heads missing entirely.  We lose face, quite literally.

Check him out at: 

http://www.gm-c.co.uk/

POINT MAGAZINE: Issue #1 Feature

Cool little feature for Issue #1 of P-OINT (People of Interest) Magazine, pages 72-75:

http://issuu.com/p-oint/docs/pointmag/1

Into the Wild: Sons of Heroes SS13

Sons of Heroes roars back onto the contemporary menswear scene for SS13, bred from a wild and rebellious desire to be heard in those urban areas plagued by social and cultural deprivation. The summer collection is tinged with the striking visual presentation of David Bowie and his alter ego Ziggy Stardust, concocted with the political unrest of the 1980s and the potent sport influences of the time.

This collection is all about reinvention – last season for AW12 the label only teased the potential for mixed fabrics, most memorably in the form of what looked like an incurably cool hybrid between a structured classic Aertex shirt and an American varsity jacket. Mind blown.

 Creative Director Lee Sedman exploits that potential this season, tempering razor sharp tailored classics with aggressive, uncompromising leather body paneling. There is a real sense of British heritage bled through with an American adventurousness here, realised quite literally in the label’s inclusion of stars & stripes pieces.

 The same unexpected juxtapositions are also evident in the lookbook styling: we have casual vests teamed with drop crotched tweed tailored trousers; the classic aesthetic electrified into fashion forwardness by bold Ziggy Stardust lightning bolts cascading through jaggedly spliced panels. 

 But now let’s get to what the label is famous for: animal print. For SS13 the label’s untouchable luxury-grunge shows no sign of being tamed. Magnetic imagery featuring gnasher-bearing lions and death-stalking tigers in digitally printed garments are as present as ever – equally endearing as they are intimidating - which undoubtedly explains their mysteriously alluring appeal. This time Mr. Sedman adds Zebras to his list of taxonomy, drenched in acid pink dye for one look that ensures the collection stays faithful to the brand’s inherent punk influences.

With its signature style reminiscent of those (frankly exhausted) Givenchy Rottweilers, it’s hardly any shock that Sons of Heroes has become a more exclusive, niche alternative for celebrity stylists. The animal print bombers have been immensely popular with the urban music scene, particularly in the American market where the brand has already been donned by the likes of Rihanna, Justin Bieber, 2 Chainz, Trey Songz, and Wiz Khalifa to name a few. Not bad for a label that’s barely 5 seasons old.

 Super-talented photographer Harriet Turney returns this season shooting brutally confident looks from brooding-exuding model Ricki Hall. Harriet, who specialises in fashion portrait documentary, is clearly building quite a name for herself having already shot editorial brand content with Stussy, Adidas and Puma. She is currently working with some of the biggest names in graffiti.

Grow some balls and grab some clothes.

http://www.sonsofheroes.com/