Dear Shaded Viewers,
Alessandro grew up between a beach in Rome with his Dad and a more conservative life up north close to Venice, with his mom. He says he was lucky that every three months he went from his Dad and his life on a nudist beach to a more conservative life with his mom. "if she wasn't there, who knows, I might still be naked on a beach." said Alessandro Simonetti. As a teenager he got into graffiti and that was how he obtained a certain kind of independence and a release for his creative expression. It was a wild life painting on trains and afterwards photographing his art in the train yards. It was the same time period when music entered his life it went anywhere from punk to hip hop to reggae.
In 2005 he moved to NYC not knowing anyone there nor how to express himself in english. New York welcomed him and he's still inspired by the city and his beautiful and talented girlfriend…none other than Jules Kim aka Bijules.
Images in the current exhibition are shot with an old passport camera with four lens and a built in flash. In 30 seconds you can take 10 portraits. He went through thousands of images taken over the past 15 years to arrive at the selection he chose for this exhibition. One of his favorite portraits in this exhibition is of Raymond Pettibon, an American artist who lives and works in New York and is known for comic like drawings with disturbing or ambiguous text . He is also closely asociated with the punk rock band Black Flag, he designed the logo and the album cover. The subjects of the exhibition are all people that inspire him and inhabit his creative world they include actors, directors, artists, musicians and skateboarders. The passport photos are blown up on a xerox machine and include iconic figures like Larry Clark, Matthew Kassovitz, Ari Marcopoulos, Ralph Gibson, Devendra Banhart, Camilla Venturini, Jules Kim, Mark Gonzales, Scott Cambell,Lake Bell and Ana Kras, a new york artist who is the image for the exhibition.
This is Alessandro Simonetti's first one man show in Paris and it will be up until July 12th at the Red Bull Space 12 rue du Mail.
I loved it, while we were talking a man asked him for his autograph. I captured it, will make a short edit of our conversation sometime this weekend. DP rough style.
http://www.alessandrosimonetti.com/
#redbullspace
Later,
Diane
