Giacomo Spazio

by Open Walls on
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Biography

If Giacomo Spazio’s works were sounds, they would be harsh noise at the loudest volume: a gallery of “mean” pop images, with shocking, fluorescent colors that shout out their presence, precisely and as loud as possible. There are many reasons for this unreserved tactic, and for Spazio, who has experience in graphics, performance, and music, the “cut, mix, and paste” is a practice intrinsic to his way of being. Similar to the disk-jockey practice, which consists of mixing different samples to a track, modifying them, selecting and associating pieces in a “never heard or seen before” succession, Spazio uses variations of that same process to make his art.

Giacomo Spazio is an Italy born, Italy based artist. In 1975, he started writing poetical phrases on the walls of Milan. At that time, he was one of the first Italian artists to make the streets his go-to canvas (1975-1987), making himself a lead in the Italian Street Art movement. He then went on to perform music between Milan and London, both alone and with a group called “Poesia Metropolitana”. In the mid-1980s he got involved with the punk and indie-rock culture and even founded the punk(art)rock band called 2+2=5 in 1982, with whom he recorded 3 records; he also took part in several other bands before finally going solo. From 1990 on, his art career, swinging between music and literature, began to make a strong emotional and social impact. “I am a man. Simply a man. My lifestyle totally reflects my artistic work. We all need poetry and we all need to get rid of any slavery!” (Spazio). It was not until the late 90s that he went back to being a visual artist.

Nowadays, Giacomo lives in Milan, works on his art and belongs to a collective of artists that he founded called the “Limited No Art Gallery” – an independent art gallery launched in 2006 to promote art, without prejudice.

Spazio’s iconography is borrowed from fanzines of the 1970s and 1980s, from punk graphics, album covers of those years, from documents of the underground scene and artistic-musical performances, from photos taken from publications, magazines, and daily newspapers. The mind immediately races to the silk screens of Andy Warhol and Pop Art, but it is only a superficial evocation because Spazio goes well beyond, making his own the practice of incursion and theft typical of the punk who uses information and images from the media and propose them with an ironic and desecrating, cynical and subversive intention. The DIY (Do It Yourself) attitude and the lo-fi style of the photocopy are elevated to the status of the artwork in these recent creations that seem like enlargements of fanzine and album covers and are, in a certain way, familiar to those who have crossed or shared the musical, cinema to graphic, and literary course and imaginary of underground cultures. 
Spazio works by dislocation and shifting, creating fakes that acquire political value: by manipulating images, the artist carries out a critique on information, on the mechanism that presides over the “creation” of news, denouncing its presumed truthfulness.

Read the interview

Selected exhibitions

  • 2015 · Daily Dose (Group Show) · The Don Gallery · Milano (Italy)
  • 2015 · My Secret – Forbidden · Book (Group Show) · Libreria Utopia · Milano (Italy)
  • 2014 · Out Of Tune (Group Show) · Melzo 42  Gallery · Milano (Italy)
  • 2014 · 20 x 20 (Group Show) · Studio D’Ars · Milano (Italy)
  • 2014 ·Part Time Poet  (Solo Show) · Humus Dance · Mendrisio (Switzerland)
  • 2013 · Second-Hand Poetry (Solo Show) · Galleria Derbylius · Milano (Italy)
  • 2013 · Oak Barrel Fumes · Hennessy 4 Street Art / The Don Gallery · Milano, (Italy)
  • 2013 · To Be With you Is All I Need (solo show) · OPEN WALLS Gallery · Berlin (Germany)
  • 2013 · Dissidents (group show) · OPEN WALLS Gallery · Berlin (Germany)
  • 2013 · Stroke#7 Art Fair · Munich (Germany)
  • 2012 · Subterranean Modern (group show) · The Don Gallery · Milan (Italy)
  • 2011 · Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair · Istanbul (Turkey)
  • 2011 · Dissidents (group show) · West Berlin Gallery · Berlin (Germany)
  • 2011 · Blooom/Art Fair · Cologne (Germany)
  • 2011 · Stroke#5 Art Fair · Berlin (Germany)
  • 2011 · Stroke#4 Art Fair · Munich (Germany)
  • 2011 · Pop Life! (solo show) · The Don Gallery · Milan (Italy)
  • 2011 · Beyond Good & Evil (group show) · West Berlin Gallery · Berlin (Germany)
  • 2010 · Innestare (group show) · Officina Temporanea · Milan (Italy)
  • 2010 · Stroke#3 Art Fair · Berlin (Germany)
  • 2010 · Stroke#2 Art Fair · Munich (Germany)
  • 2010 · As Loud As Possible (group show) · Xlab Gallery · Berlin (Germany)
  • 2009 · Pop Disaster (solo show) · LimitedNoArtGallery · Milan (Italy)
  • 2009 · Museum of Contemporary Art · Istanbul (Turkey)
  • 2009 · Stroke#1 Art Fair · Munich (Germany)
  • 2009 · Derbylius · Artist Book Show · Milan (Italy)
  • 2008 · Art Fair · Geneva (Switzerland)
  • 2008 · Pop Disaster (solo show) · Orange Gallery · Bergamo (Italy)
  • 2007 · Never Forget (group show) · Container Art · Geneva (Switzerland)
  • 2006 · Do it Again (group show) · Container Art · Varese (Italy)
  • 2006 · A New Loop (group show) · MOMA -Museum of Contemporary Art · Tokyo (Japan)
  • 2006 · Selected Ambient Words (group show) · Galleria Comunale · Riccione (Italy)
  • 2005 · Selected Ambient Words (group show) · Galleria Santa croce · Cattolica (Italy)
  • 2005 · Selected Ambient Words (group show) · Galleria Libreria Derbyliu · Milan (Italy)
  • 2005 · Box 43 (group show) · Container Art · Bergamo (Italy)

Selected press