Everything Is Visible: Claudio Parentela
“I was born in a cloud above the distant hill.”
Italian multimedia artist and writer Claudio Parentela (he/his) makes art alive with texture and fluctuation, eluding categorization or a sense of completion. Themes of playfulness and absurdity, camouflage and revelation, wavering physicality and temporal fluidity pervade his art.
His creative works are widely exhibited and published in both traditional and digital formats, including with Skorie Industriali in Rome; Interzona in Verona; Pitchfork, NY Arts Magazine and Diesel Magazine; Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples; the Italian Institute of Culture in London; Black Maria Gallery in Los Angeles; Andenken Gallery in Denver; hogeDRUKgebied in Rotterdam, Out3/Mostra Internacional d’art Urba Publicitari in Barcelona, and many more.
Parentela’s expressions thrive on juxtaposition and abstraction; he describes them as “anarchic, colorful, raw and dreamy, romantic, linear, twisted… ” Lines delicate and bulky, materials heavy and textured, and colors bold and muted join in a discordant, captivating chorus.
In his complex multimedia collages, does the top layer contradict or echo the images it conceals? Perhaps the surface is the most vulnerable. In Parentela’s words, “Everything is visible.”
5 Questions for the Artist:
1. What is art to you?
It is the only possibility to live and exist in this beautiful and terrible world, in my only autistic and artistic being. It is my freedom, my redeeming myself and finding myself continually; opening new, inaccessible doors every day. Blowing the knots of my heart with the wind.
2. What did you make in the past, and why?
I have always drawn, painted, photographed — always. I have chosen to do this beautiful and perilous job because it is my destiny, it was my destiny, which I have chosen and built patiently day after day. It’s my air and my water, the land on which I walk.
3. What are you making now, and why?
I never plan anything. I do a lot of things together as they come. I started my new tarot deck. I am preparing two new exhibitions, working on some new t-shirts and on a new video.
4. What are your hopes for the future?
To be able to continue what I do, to be free as I am
5. What else would you like to say?
Thanks for the great interview.
Artist Supplied Bio:
Born in 1962 in Catanzaro, Italy, where he lives and works, Claudio Parentela is an illustrator, painter, digital painter, photographer, mail artist, cartoonist, collagist, textile artist, freelance journalist and tarologist. He’s been active for many years in the international contemporary art scene. “My art is freaky, stylish, anarchic, colorful, raw and dreamy, romantic, linear, twisted… it’s contemporary with a touch, sometimes smooth other times strong, weird, anarchic, schizophrenic… as me.” He adds:
Sometimes I chase myself, putting myself in my thousand knots: threads that wrap me up and turn into black and desolate veins. Eyes that brush against me and whisper words to me that I have never told myself. I run, I run without ever falling, almost flying, and I see my naked body covered with a blanket that you gave me so long ago. The contrast is now solved — everything is visible — I was born in a cloud above the distant hill.
Find more of Claudio Parentela’s work on Instagram.
The Ask Artists interview series features all forms of creative expression.
