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Small and pink, relegated to the corners or distributed in the middle of the work, the elephants are never lacking in the paintings of Mr. Fijodor, street artist living in Turin that found its distinguishing mark in the image of a Dumbo declined in a contemporary key. Why Dumbo? Because the elephant with big ears, during a particularly alcohol and psychedelic night, dreamed of being able to fly thanks to its malformation because of which everyone mocked and marginalized it. Through the giants ears it could fly, soar above all others and see the world from another perspective, where everything takes on new shapes and colors.
Used to paint large walls Fijodor Benzo (Imperia, 1979) does not exclude from his work paintings and drawings, where he focuses the themes that have always characterized – non-violence, respect for the environment, and the obsessive and sick relationship of people with objects – a synthesis on a clear background that has close and obvious ties with graffiti. Around the “urban” figures spread over stained surfaces that lead to chaos endorsed by the artist, along with a “poetics of error” that always guides him, appear animals, bare trees, visions that emerge from the fuchsia spray, straight or reverse writings by the subtle and discreet sign or the vigorous “brush” that seems to raise its voice to be heard by all.
“Starting from a canvas, the artist invents the draft at the moment, based on his mood or the one of the people he meets in his work by placing their real-life stories, perhaps in the form of detail or phrase, thus loading up the work on a new meaning that might not have had without that accurate instant”, writes Chiara Messori, curator of an exhibition on Mr Fijodor ongoing in Carpi and significantly entitled Casuale.
It is in an instinctive gesture and not caged in design that emanates the energy of the subject, which is often given to a natural order through the arrangement of figures around a perfect circle or a triangle, or a rational form which defines the core of the story, in a sense, preventing dispersion.
Star of many street art festivals, Mr. Fijodor has participated in urban renewal projects (the most recent trip in the harbor area of Cittanova Marche) and areas where the lives of those who live in need of humor and lightness, as in the case of the prison of Tirano in Valtellina, where the artist has worked closely with the inmates, listening and including into the work – chalk on black, as if it were a large blackboard – quotes and moments of real existence.
Mr. Fijodor. Casuale
By Chiara Messori
Until November 16th, 2014
DarkRoom SilmarArtGallery
