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Swirling, Naked…. Angelo Musco’s Haunting ‘Bodyscapes’

one small seed — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 05:30:50 +0000

Italian-born Angelo Musco has a life journey as unique as his art; this guy is no average Joe. From birth he weighed in at a whopping 6.5 kilos after 11 months in the womb. Causing great complications during birth, Musco became trapped and turned blue and in a critical state he was rushed to hospital, leaving his mother in anguish as she thought him to be dead.

image: e-junkie.com

image: flickr.com

image: old.enciclopedia.com

Musco was paralyzed on his right side for the first years of his life. This injury, called Erb’s Palsy, is the tearing of neck, arm and shoulder nerves. With scheduled surgeries to fix the damage, Musco’s superstitious mother saw the disease as a bad omen and refrained from having any surgical work done on Musco and instead he spent the first 10 years of his life in therapy to strengthen his injured side of the body. The traumatic experience since birth is Musco’s main inspiration behind his art,

A body of work that is driven by the personal experience, a birth prolonged until the 11^th month due to a hormonal dysfunction. A difficult pregnancy that has left both deep marks in the unconscious memories and in his physical body here becomes a narrative of suspended images- reflections of silent and surreal visions.

Brought up in Naples, his time was spent at school or helping out in his father’s grocery store doing deliveries. With his school situated near water, Musco would muse out of the window at the happenings on the river as he witnessed an array of interesting sights, such as the high speed boat chases of police and smugglers with black-market contraband. These activities very significant to Musco and his work. He later went on to study at the Academia Di Belle Arti and took an apartment in a very dangerous and historic part of the city; his new dwelling was next to the Napoli Sotteranea, a subterranean second city. The mysticism, history and legends of this old city destroyed by Mount Vesuvius were an ongoing fascination for the young artist.

image: rydye.thepop.com

image :talk.me

image: talk.me

A poor student/artist who worked part time jobs and couldn’t afford painting materials, Musco started experimenting with installations and mixed-media like fire, stones and the bodies of his fellow workers. An artist with such a rich and ‘troubled’ childhood created work that depicts all these times of his life and serves as rationale. With the human body is the main focus, he creates mosaics of nude bodies, woven and making it look like constructions that depict symbolic representation of eggs, nests amniotic fluid and other aspects of procreation. His work seems almost like great murals of naked bodies meshed together to form one symbolic meaning.

Words : Bianca Budricks

Sources: trendhunter.com, angelomusco.com, vimeo.com

images: trendhunter.com

Jacrot’s musing cities

one small seed — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:34:15 +0000

: © Christophe Jacrot

Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur – that of ’a person who walks the city in order to experience it.’ Frenchman Christophe Jacrot is one such chap. He scours cityscapes looking for the finest moments that a city can offer an observer and captures these timeless moments with astounding photographic skill.

He continuously plunges into New York, Paris, London, or Hong Kong to photograph and bring to light the hidden, fleeting moments of the everyday in their full poetic density and romantic charisma – which he only does in rain or snow (lumas.com).

Jacrot endeavours only in the wettest or stormiest weather to seize the full atmospheric effect of a city or rain or snow-sleeted street. ‘In my opinion, there are two ways of capturing the world for a photographer; on the one hand grasping its horror, and on the other sublimating it. I have chosen the second. More specifically, I like the way rain, snow and ‘bad weather’ awakens a feeling of romantic fiction within me (climatic excesses are another topic)’(christophejacrot.com)

Jacrot’s most recent work titled Hong Kong in the Rain was done in the busy metropolis of Hong Kong. He has the special talent to capture a city’s unique ambiance, as these cities moods and impressions are all different he depicts that expertly. There is a clear difference between eclectic cluttered streets of Hong Kong in contrast with the chic framed Paris. Though Jacrot depicts these cities unto their own there is still a unity in his concept and work, giving it a distinct flow of continuity and diversity. Jacrot romanticizes these moments of pouring rain, people huddled under umbrellas, women in elegant heels glistening almost ornament-like on the wet asphalt.

The play on light and reflection is core to his work, creating an underlying sense of warmth. Fleeting instants, these images flow like impressions – streams of consciousness created pictorially. ‘I see these elements as a fabulous ground for photography, an under-used visual universe with a strong evocative power, and with a richness of subtle lights. This universe escapes most of us, since we are too occupied getting undercover.

Man becomes a ghostly silhouette wandering and obeying the hazards of rain or of snow.

My approach is deliberately pictorial and emotional. (christophejacrot.com)

Haunting and almost cinematic, Christophe Jacrot takes cities’ moody characteristics and giving its people a hazy, dreamlike aesthetic.

Words : Bianca Budricks

Source: christophejacrot.com, uk.lumas.com,