Immortality

Marco Battaglini, with his ArtPopClassic, sweeps away all space-time logic, fusing past and present to defeat prejudices, mental patterns and free the human race. The colourful, vibrant and vital works of Marco Battaglini are like a good-naturedly mischievous time machine that enjoys shaking, in a cheerful controlled chaos, characters, environments and icons from different eras. His art is a journey, from the front row, through the history of art where ingenious space-time subversions create a pleasant, and very surrealist, surprise effect. It may happen that you observe a Renaissance painter in his sumptuous atelier who, in period clothes, is painting nothing less than... a painting by Roy Lichtenstein. Or a Marylin by Andy Warhol. Marco Battaglini addresses our society, asking and advising us to observe the world, or rather the worlds, from a different perspective using art as a tool to dismantle prejudices, preconceptions and live in perennial creative freedom. Words? No, facts. He was the first, after his academic training in Italy, where he masterfully learned the history of art and the ability to reproduce the great masters, he moved to Costa Rica. In search of the sun, Caribbean colors and new points of sight, discovering that all it takes is taking a plane to arrive at a completely different mindset. Thus was born ArtPopClassic, a real movement where art takes on the difficult task of overthrowing pre-packaged ideas and prejudices in the name of renewed freedom. As? Playing with opposites. Young Ephebians, with sculptural physiques, are captivated by the paintings of Titian, Guido Reni and many other masters. Thrown from the domes of the chapels to our suburbs, covered in tattoos like footballers, tronistas and influencers. They wear very tight Calvin Klein briefs while their tapered fingers no longer point to the sky, but to walls smeared with graphite while clutching lollipops. The public finds itself in a virtual stadium where the most important match is played: the one between the large antithetical categories. Present and past, elegance and vulgarity, wealth and poverty, aesthetics and anti-aesthetics. All amplified by writings that seem copied and pasted from the walls of a station bathroom or from the school diary of a rebellious and pacifist teenager: Make love not war, Gentleman prefer Blondes. There is no shortage of references to the world of music, publishing and cartoons in a delicious cross-media mix and match. A declared surrealist, this Italian-Costa Rican fusion artist looks to Duchamp: ideas generate other ideas, creating new ways of seeing things and, consequently, new worlds. Let's not be fooled, though. The irony and inevitable fun hide a severe criticism of society. Battaglini reproaches humanity for being inconsistent, for living along non-communicating parallel lines, solitary prime numbers clinging to their own beliefs. In these individual microworlds people are constantly under attack. The enemy is the disproportionate amount of information, too much to be processed and understood. It is at this point that art intervenes. Battaglini's works do not claim to provide answers or solutions. Rather, they question, instill doubts and invite reflection. The amused shock of the space-time pastiche generates questions. Question after question, the public understands that prejudice, stereotypes and fixed beliefs change quickly from generation to generation. They change as soon as you get on a plane headed for distant countries. They are a prison built with sand from which it takes very little to escape. It is no longer beauty that saves the world, but art. And never mind if, in the fight against infernal demons, the archangel Gabriel wears the Superman t-shirt. He has the body, he can afford it.