NO SERIOUS ART PLEASE
LAURINA PAPERINA: THE DUCK WHO DOESN'T WANT TO MAKE SERIOUS ART
Not every artist wants to change the world. Some just want to watch it squirm — and then draw it, very badly on purpose, with a grin.
Laurina Paperina is one of those artists. Born in 1980 in Rovereto, Italy, and now residing in what she calls Duckland — a small town somewhere in the universe — Paperina is a painter, illustrator, installation maker, video animator, and occasional photographer with one very clear artistic agenda: she does not want to make serious art, and she would very much like you to know that.
She describes herself as "a duck with a human head and vice versa" — a creature comfortably straddling absurdity and sharp cultural observation. Her cartoonish, child-like characters are disarming on the surface and quietly devastating underneath, poking fun at the self-importance of the art world, the theatre of politics, the machinery of religion, and the endless spectacle of pop culture with equal and gleeful irreverence.
Her ongoing multi-part project How to Kill the Artists, begun in 2007, is perhaps her most deliciously conceived body of work. In it, Paperina pays twisted homage to modern and contemporary art world royalty — Picasso, Marina Abramović, Takashi Murakami — by killing them off using their own work as the murder weapon. Murakami is eaten alive by one of his own maniacally grinning flowers. Abramović performs herself, quite literally, to death. It is gruesome, childlike, and completely brilliant.
The motivation behind all of it is a wild sense of humor combined with a pointed commentary on contemporary media and the all-too-serious pretensions of today's art world. Paperina understands that the best way to deflate something is not to argue with it but to draw it as a cartoon and watch it collapse under the weight of its own ridiculousness.
Her work has accumulated an ironic commentary on current events that is as culturally sharp as it is visually irreverent — and that tension between the cute and the cutting is exactly what makes it stick.
Greatest inspirations or influences?
wild nature, cartoons, comics, television,
death, horror movies, strange people, animals ...
Most memorable exhibition to date?
My first solo show in Paris and then in New York City! Paris is beautiful and New York is so full of energy, creative people and beautiful places, I love it! It was a giant event and great opportunity for my work and myself in my evolution as an artist.
Upcoming projects or exhibitions?
I will do some group shows in Europe, and a solo show in Lugano (Switzerland) Titled Hello Hell! at Lab_Comacina, curated by Valeria Donnarumma and organized by Arte Urbana Lugano
Most interesting response to your work so far?
Well I’ve read some interesting responses on many websites and magazines to my work, mainly positive, which I hope means that I'm doing good work and that the people can relate to my thinking.
Favorite websites Laurina?
Sites discussing contemporary art, street art, and illustration
"whokilledbambi", "juxtapoz", "fecalface"....
Anything else you’d like to share with our audience
Yeah, people just have fun!
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