More than an artist, Mirco Piccioli is an explorer, a fearless adventurer in a journey into the realm of pure fantasy.

His "intense" collages or if you like assemlages or montages of images and words are only the final, objective and natural result of a conceptual and visual research begun long ago and perpetraded, committed and carried out restlessly by this artist, completely censorship free and in total freedom since he was a teenager when i made his very first collage at the age of 16.

In his continuos career as a collagist, he went through several stages, he started with a small miniaturised collage in black and white to soon passing to darker and more obscure works who were beginning to explore a variety of deviant subjects as in fashion in the 80's.

Later he passed to new coloured psychedelic works still in small sized format.

After several years of persuing his work, he started to include erotic and fetish elements in his compositions as well as symbols of luxury and fashion and a new use of the written words used to express deep concepts, ideals, subliminal messages and revolutionary thoughts !

So words and images are inseparable and joint together, never just casually but manipolated in order to male and to have a reading sense with meanings.

His further development was in the use of background colouring as the cut outs are used as if they were a brush in the hand of the painter to add hard and soft tones and in accordance with the rules of human visual perception as he has acknowledged and studied the various theories as written by Newton, Goethe, Schopenhauer, klee, kandisky as he has mentioned to me during various conversations i had with this artist.

So colour is the primary element that distingiushes his work i think followed by the choice of the images he uses to convey his ideas, images athat often are rare to see or to find around.

During time as he was learning to make larger size works, much more stylized and effective, his composition became more elaborated by combining his personal touch in his care for aesthetics with his own way of laying out the cut ups and for balancing the proportions to create new perspectives.

All these efoorts are nothing less than pure explorations as i said earlier, he explores inside and out side, he approach us the viewers by speaking his own language, presenting us contemporary art at its best with a very unique style.

Mirco Piccioli works however are not easy or easily accessable at first sight but incredibly complex even to simply just view !

They're not immediate on the contrary they require careful esamination, repeated observation and even mediation i might add to fully see and notice the infinity of possible and not possible conceptual and subliminal messages disseminated everywhere in compositions.

So my suggestion to any viewer who is captured by the visual impact of this unique artist is to observe and contemplate even the tinest detail as they might have hidden messages, but positive messages only as this artist loves his viewers.

David Quadrini

EXPLOSIONS

(Collages et Vidéo-Collages de Mirco Piccioli)

Les papiers-collés et les vidéo-collages de Mirco Piccioli (en attendant d'autres matières, d'autres expressionnismes, de cet artiste fécond) font exploser, sur la toile et sur l'écran, un monde privé de sens, pour le recomposer avec soin dans sa cruauté et sa vitalité essentielle. Simultanément ils nous enchantent et nous agressent. Le travail de l'artiste part avant tout du mouvement; mouvement effréné mais savamment rythmé des vidéos; jets croisés, détournés ou directement dirigés vers notre cerveau des regards de ses sirènes publicitaires. Car dans ses œuvres plastiques court une veine pop-art (je dirais même pub-art tant le nombre des papiers qu'il arrache aux pages publicitaires semble élevé) qui se rattache directement aux travaux d'un futuriste comme Fortunato Depero et que l'on retrouve sans peine dans les œuvres en vidéo à travers l' intérêt que l'artiste démontre pour les objets et les rythmes du quotidien. Ses assemblages sont aussi servis par un sens profond de la couleur,  un colorisme éclatant et frénétique qui ne dément ni ne renie les racines italiennes et toscanes de Mirco Piccioli lorsqu'il compose ses couleurs stridentes (mais comme une voix chanteuse peut être simultanément stridente et timbrée), vitales, fécondes.

Dans ses papiers-collés ils nous enchantent donc, mais dans le même temps ils nous médusent, ses corps féminins à la fois enchevetrés dans le bazar de nos vies et victorieusement dérobés à toute contrainte! Cette vive lacération de nos certitudes que les œuvres provoquent provient sans doute de la tension avec laquelle l'artiste élabore son propre discours en se servant de la (ô combien moderne !) pluralité vertigineuse des objets. Mille bouches, mille yeux, mille sexes mélangés aux objets de notre quotidienne consommation s'adressent à nous sur mille tons qui se ramassent et composent un seul, impérieux et véhément discours dont on ne se détache qu'avec peine.  

Dans la plus pure tradition poétique du collage, la poétique de Mirco Piccioli relève encore du défi avant-gardiste car l'artiste n'abandonne jamais ses propres références, et surtout pas cette pérenne explosion intérieure qui depuis toujours le lie à Nietzsche et à Schopenhauer. Et c'est pourquoi ses œuvres en vidéo, par la grammaire impétueuse de leurs prises de vue et de leur montage, opèrent une mutation sur les phénomènes qu'elles observent (fêtes populaires, voyage, objets du quotidien) dont elles usent ironiquement comme pré-texte et dont, en fin de compte, elles nous proposent une version critique, désenchantée, essentielle mais ardente.      

                                                                                                                      Claire Soullier