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January 28, 2007
I 've often looked at torn posters on urban walls in terms of faded dreams and desires; or rather the attempts by advertisers to represent our desires and dreams so that we identify with what they want us to buy. In this lacerated poster the desire is about romantic love in an instrumentalized world:
Mimmo Rotella, Casablanca, 1963-1983
Rotella calls the image a 'torn poster' decollages which he made from torn advertising posters. His décollages, which drew heavily on film imagery from the 1950s and 60s, were made by tearing layers of film posters stuck on canvas to recreate the appearance of peeling billboards.
He says:
I went through a period of crisis [1953] and then,in the middle of it, I was impressed by the walls covered with torn handbills. I was literally fascinated because I thought then that painting was finished and that is was necessary to find something new, lively, and to the point. And so that evening I began to tear these handbills down, rip them down from the walls, and take them back to my studio where I would put them back together and leave them just as they were, just as i saw them.This was décollages were born".
The film imagery meant that Rotella is interpreted as a pioneer of European Pop art.
The walls of our cities cvan be interpreted as an open book where one can ‘read’ the images of a continuously evolving history.
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