San Giovanni in Persiceto (Bo), 1980
A divertissement inspired by the playful imagination of children, a “calm chaos”, ordered in its scenic and surreal world where they accumulate, as dreamy drifts of hypothetical shipwrecks, objects, animals, plants in pristine environments, landscapes with a horizon that borders on the reeds typical of the lake landscape of Emilia where he lives and works; or piles of things, such as mattresses, boxes, furniture, trains, books, primordial eggs and circus masks piled up, adrift, in the depths of the sea, a metaphor for the meanders of the psyche, where the submerged part of the Freudian Iceberg sinks, our unconscious. These are the elements that dominate the research of Luca Moscariello from Bologna, focused on the value of time, analyzed with the traditional technique of painting on wood through objects that seem to compete for the proscenium of a theatrical scene, with a “baroque attitude to mise en scene” (Ivan Quaroni).
His works are composed of an inventory of merry-go-rounds, ducks, toy trains, paper airplanes, teddy bears, ducklings, spinning tops, dolls that embody the hidden desires of his childhood, but are able to connect to a contemporary dimension, thanks to the presence of measuring poles, festoons, dinghies, road signs, in a process of continuous evolution, of unlimited expansion in time and space. Things are piled up together with the symbolic meanings that are able to convey, multiplying them thanks to their continuous juxtaposition in unprecedented combinations that challenge the cognitive abilities of the observer, in a narrative path made of unceasing relegations in time and space of the fertile visual imagination of the artist. The boxes are containers of memory ready to host future events still to be preserved, the white sheets are pages of existential experiences still to be lived and noted, the perspective grids represent the metaphor of life coordinates still to be followed, journeys to be undertaken, while the barber’s pole is the symbol, since the Middle Ages, of a place where physical ills could be cured, like the wounds of the soul, and, finally, the laces and festoons are a metaphor of interpersonal ties. Moscariello’s journey to rediscover the magic of things, guarded by the dust of time, is never linear: the titles of his works suggest the infinite proliferation of his story, acmes at reuniting the feeling of the past with the value of lightness.
The artist graduated in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna. In 2007 he was commissioned a large public work on sheet metal for the Municipality of San Giorgio in Piano (Bo). In 2008, The MUSE. Tridentine Museum of Natural Sciences of Trento dedicates to him the personal exhibition Memoria e materia. In 2009 he is a finalist of the XII Morlotti Prize held at the Museo della Permanente of Milan and Villa Subaglio of Merate (Co). In 2011 he exhibits at the Spazio Thetis of the Arsenale in Venice and at the Museo Ca’ la Ghironda in Zona Predosa (Bo) with the solo show La grammatica della polvere. In 2014 he exhibits, as a finalist of the contest Mantegna Cercasi, at the Casa del Mantegna in Mantua and at MAC. Museum of Contemporary Art in Lissone (Mb), as a finalist of the Premio Lissone. In 2015 Colossi gallery hosts his personal exhibition Allegria di Naufragi and he exhibits at the Museum “Il Correggio” in Correggio (Re), at Rocca delle Macìe in Castellina in Chianti (Si), at Palazzo Gromo Losa in Biella and at the Museo del Territorio Biellese. In 2016 he participates in the collective Shakespeare. La sostanza dell’uomo at the Colossi Gallery. In 2017 one of his works is acquires by the Civic Collection of Drawing of MuSa of Salò (Bs) and exhibited at the Casa del Mantegna in Mantua, on the occasion of the collective Se telefonando… In 2017-2018 he exhibited at the Civic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Viadana (Mt). The artist has participated in important contemporary art exhibitions at national and international level, such as Art Athina, Art Vilnius, Artefiera Bologna and Art Verona.
In 2018, after being selected for the realization of the first artist residency of the Rocco Guglielmo Foundation, one of his works got included in the permanent collection of the MARCA in Catanzaro.