ARTIST TALK: MARCO CASSANI

Nia S. Amira
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Arts and culture is a bond that can not be separated and have a very close re­lationship with one another. Human have such values and God will lead to make it per­fect as masterpiece because human want to achieve the highest goal in their works.

Marco Cassani was born in Milan, Italia in 1981. This young Artist studied in Brera Academy of Art, Milan. At this time Marco works and lives both in Italy and Indonesia, the country of his beloved wife.

Cassani is a dynamism and an honest exotism artist if this could be used as mate­rial for those who are not easy to inter­pret what is inside of his mind when he shows his naked pho­tographs with several Asian women who dressed up properly enough in some scenes of picture.

It was at Vivi Yip Art, Ja­karta Marco came for his exhibition from July 1-9th, 2010. After he produced live streaming video on Decem­ber 2, 2012, Marco held Art exhibition with the title “De­stroy the head” on December 16, 2012 in platfom3, Band­ung.

Indonesia gives Marco abundant idea to explore and from the beginning he was al­ways keen on to elevate men and their behavior to be his work’s object. In his Chance project in Bandung, a total of 200 scupltures offered his own head to be crushed by all the guests invited in which the performance was docu­mented using surveillance cameras (CCTV) all the time and broadcasted live ober the internet. Demolition also im­plied the destruction of the sanctuty of artists and works of art that have been (consid­ered) to have high position.

“Like Cerberus, the ani­mal guarding the gates of the underworld in Greek mythol­ogy, Marco Cassani’s practice consists of three heads: his practice as artist, his role as Lucie Fontaine’s employee − regarding the unique pro­gram he developed at her Ba­linese branch Kayu − and, last but not least, his position as founder and CEO of VAPRICO (Value Prism Corporation), an art project organized like a venture that aims to highlight particularities of human be­ing, collecting them in a form of intellectual multitude. Omni-tasking, schizophrenic and full of contradictions, this position brings a myriad of possibilities: Questioning not only the understanding what is means to be an artist today, it also triggers a larger discourse about the lack of distinction between labor and leisure (the very base of cultural production) while reaching its most paradoxical and therefore contemporary state only through positions similar to that of Cassani.

The Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute Jakarta proudly presented an Artist Talk wth Marco Cassani and Astrid Honold from OFCA International as moderator. Marco Cassani talked about his artistic practice, particu­larly about his current solo exhibition entitled Indisci­plinato at OFCA International from 26 May – 24 June, 2016 in its new home base Sarang building in Yogyakarta.

”Presented through a care­fully orchestrated series of act ions, including a photoshoot that echoes Brancusi’s studio or using the “art production” of a village’s “madman”, In­disciplinato reveals the pos­sibility of questioning once again the state of the arts, but this time within a context far from the comfort zone of conceptual art.

In other words, it is im­portant to stress the fact that Marco Cassani has de­veloped this radical and con­ceptual body of work within the context of Indonesia, a country whose dynamic and vibrant art scene is still root­ed in certain understandings and conventions of what it means (or supposed to mean) to be an artist today.”