Wake up

Painting Political / Social Oil (Tommaso Neri - Bologna Italy)

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Added: 1 year ago

Wake up

Painting, Political / Social, Oil, Canvas, 50x50x2cm, 2009

Notes on artwork:

This oil painting started from a true reportage photo which was censured by the official mass media and some internet websites.
Apart from the reporting aspect and the symbolic one of purity, which today is thrown away and forgotten amongst ruins, this series of paintings is titled 'Reality Show' because my main intention is a reflexion focused on the use of mass media, on the sometimes fading border between reality and fiction and also on how aesthetics today strongly influences ethics.

Finalist Prize Painting (Celeste Prize 2009 )

Say something Comments (87)

2 months ago

Emilio Lovisa Artist

Good for you Tommaso for having the courage and insight to express what you feel. If images like that one were made public I think there would be less atrocities happening in this world. It is pointless not to show the truth, however horrific it may be. Only when the horrors of war are shoved in people faces will you get the right reaction.

5 months ago

Tommaso Neri Artist

This work is without doubt one of my best works. Thinking reconfigure an evolutionary approach to look at reality, and slam in the face of a glossy superficial world.. where art is still beautiful, a distraction from real world, an happening, the nonsense, a parade of old rich bored women .. this is art in Italy. It is the same thing for all the rest, politic, education..

11 months ago

biagio castilletti Artist

l'arte è comunicazione, e a volte si deve avere il coraggio di prendere certi argomenti scottanti.

11 months ago

Axolotl Gallery

Tommasso,
It is ironic, as you say, that such a powerful image, with its potential to shock large numbers of people out of their complacency and complicit acceptance of wars supposedly carried out in their name has been censored. Only two works of art have ever made me cry and for very different reasons, the first time I saw Michaelangelo's dying slave I was moved by the beauty, when I think about your image of the child's severed head I weep for the horror and futility.

11 months ago

Axolotl Gallery

Tommaso,
I think your Reality series is the most shocking thing I have ever seen and that is obviously the point you were trying to get across. We have through the media become almost completely de-sensitised to war especially when it is air-brushed to the extent that it is in recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think your work is a real wake up call on a par with the famous photographic image of the naked screaming Vietnamese child which so shocked the previous generation.

11 months ago

mario_c Artist

.................. intensa e lascia senza parole. La sento molto. Complimenti.

11 months ago

ADRIA Artist

Forse e me lo auguro, qualcosa d utile è l'informazione cioè spiegare a parole o scritto senza dover ricorrere a immagini di bambini morti (anche nel rispetto di quelle povere anime) cosa è la guerra e la fame nel mondo e su internet possiamo trovare notizie

11 months ago

ADRIA Artist

Non credo che sia necessario mostrare immagini molto forti, come questa ad esempio, per far capire alla società cosa è la guerra. E' inutile girarci attorno l'essere umano di principio è egoista, anche negli atti di volontariato o di beneficenza, cmq speriamo sempre in un ritorno. Con l'andare del tempo immagini forti come questa non saranno di alcun effetto per nessuno, (purtroppo) questo perchè ci faremo l'abitudine e saremo sempre presi dal nostro andare di fretta e dalla ns quotidianetà.