Aikuboy

“I collect what kids leave behind them to be thrashed, when they’re approaching adolescence and toys are no more an interesting thing. I see their puppets and games like an attempt to reorganize the world and a training to life, so I maintain the memory of these rites of passage and make a statement, going in search of the object of their first experiences -the thrown away toy, apparently useless- then I bash it and modify it.
I also pick up what adults leave behind, when to make space to the last model of electronic gadget they get rid of what’s gone out of style, because they must constantly buy to feel in step with times.
At last, the game of mine, is to shape a product that kids-now-grown can appreciate, ‘cause it’s transformed in something that binds past and present. Through the further process of imagination, design, sculpture, assembling and painting, materials that have no longer an use in everyday or industrial life get the shape of pieces similar to toys. They’re toys that have found a new existence, but with a look by now deformed, fruit of the memory of the elaboration that drove them to be initially goods of the consumerist utopia, and then of the dystopia associated to being thrown away like junk. For those newborn toys, that through my hands escaped the industrial production/destruction circle, the “traumatic” route of the reject is still displayed in the final result: sometimes in the grinning faces of subjects, with shocking shapes and colors, some others in the macabre aesthetic that characterizes them. Stylistically these unique works are the creative expression of my personal mix of Pop/Lowbrow Art, Japanese Anime and Manga, character design and Designer Toys, with figurative connections to the contemporary Cyberpunk.”