PLAN B. ARTIST STUDIOS

ANTONIO REILLO

Antonio Reillo is an artist full of surprises; still to express exactly what he will get up to during his residency at  PLAN B. We know one thing for sue: that whatever he embarks on, will sure be out of this world and fabulous. Antonio is an artist who carries a Kalashnikov inside a Louis Vuitton bag.

Turning what is not-familiar (un-heimlich) into something familiar (heimlich), cracking the certainties of everyday habits,transforming trivial items in icons. Riello's for 30 years has been working with his distinctive wittines in order to make clear that irony is the right (and very serious) approach to Contemporary Art. His irony knowns how to play with what is taken for granted, underscoring alternative points of view and new perspectives.

His work may be naturally associated to Aldo Mondino's and younger artists like Erwin Wurm, and Martin Kippenberger. Anartistic attitude with a lot of intellectual transgression and refined taunt. His Ladies Weapons (real militaryguns decorated like elegant accessories for sophisticated ladies), Tarokki (an array of curious fakesluxury items), Italiani Brava Gente (an art videogame about Italian xenophobic attitude against Albanian people 1997),

Ashes to Ashes (extraordinary bespoke glass urns cointaining the relics of his personal library) are all mirroring the artist relationship with Western Civilization and his paradoxes. Riello has also a defining sense of jest (motd'esprit) and a particular taste for detournements, in someway a kind of British "witticism" perhaps originated through the long time he spends in London.

LINK