Contemporary Art Gallery in Castiglioncello
- Via Marconi 1/D int. A – Castiglioncello (Li)
- +39 0586 752069
- +39 348 3337010
- info@galleriagranelli.it
Marco Lodola was born in Dorno (PV) on 4 April 1955 and attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and Milan.
In the early 1980s, Lodola founded the “Nuovo Futurismo” movement with a group of artists, of which the critic Renato Barilli was the principal theorist.
Lodola, since that season, has made the search for the use of poor industrial materials, such as plexiglass, perspex and enamels, fundamental to his creative work, to arrive at innovative experiences.
He uses them to obtain images, which also directly refer to his other cultural interests, from music to cinema, from advertising to comics.
Since 1983, he has exhibited in major Italian and European cities such as Rome, Milan, Florence, Bologna, Lyon, Vienna, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris and Amsterdam.
He has participated in exhibitions and projects for important industries such as Swatch, Coca-Cola, Vini Ferrari, Harley Davidson, Illy, Francis-Francis, Biagiotti and Byblos.
In 1994, Marco Lodola was invited to exhibit, by the government of the People’s Republic of China, in the premises of the former archives of the imperial city of Beijing.
In 1996 he started working in the United States in Boca Raton, Miami and New York.
He also participated in the XII Rome Quadrennial and the VI Biennial of Sculpture in Monte Carlo.
In the summer of ’98, commissioned by Saatchi & Saatchi, he executed the designs for the posters of Piazza del Popolo in Rome, for the Opera opera Tosca by Puccini.
In the same year he founded the “Gruppo ’98” committed to linking artists of different disciplines through a transversal action: the manifesto of the movement is made public in his workshop-atelier in Pavia, a former factory open to musicians, photographers and writers, where to realize interdisciplinary meetings; The space will be called Lodolandia.
The initiative produces fervent effects: the writer Aldo Busi invites Lodola to illustrate for the publisher Frassinelli a 17th century volume by the Japanese Ihara Saikaku, while the almost homonymous Marco Lodoli asks him to draw the covers of the latest novels.
Equally active are the artist’s relations with the world of music and entertainment, in particular with the 883 and the Timoria: for the latter Lodola takes care of the sets for multiple concerts and the covers of albums and gadgets;
In 1999 he made the Tribe Generation music award, the Brescia Music Art film award and the “Roxi Bar” music award in 2000.
In 2000, Lodola, always linked to the theme of dance, was commissioned by the Teatro Massimo of Palermo to create The Greedy Lights, four luminous totems six meters high, depicting significant episodes of the nine works on the bill.
The sculptures will remain on display in the main city squares, as has already happened in Montecarlo and at the Castello Visconteo of Pavia.
He also created the theatrical set design “Ortelio non sucere sleep”, presented at the Todi festival.
In 2001, Marco Lodola took care of the image of the Venice Carnival.
In 2002 he created the luminous sculpture “A tutta birra” dedicated to the figure of the great entrepreneur Venceslao Menazzi Moretti, which was placed in the new city park of Udine, where the first famous beer factory once stood.
In 2003, he created the luminous “Venerea” in the context of the exhibition Venus unveiled by Umberto Eco held at the Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels, for which he also oversaw the installation of the external façade and the Controluce exhibition at the Palazzo del Turismo in Riccione, which in 2004 it was transferred to São Paulo (Museo Brasileiro from Escultura Marilisa Rathsam), Rio de Janeiro (Museum of Modern Art), Mexico City (Polyforum Siqueiros), and to the Museo Regional de Guadalajara.
In 2005 he created a poster for the Turin Winter Olympics, a furniture collection for Mirabili, the pink jersey for the Giro d’Italia, the logo for the “Speciale per voi …” transmission by Renzo Arbore, as well as the new image of Roxy bar for Red Ronnie.
In 2006 another light sculpture was placed in the Mexico City international airport, and for Christmas a sculpture in Piazza di Spagna (Rome).
He also created the image of the centenary of the pacifist movement of Gandhi.
In 2007, Marco Lodola created the logo for the 50 years of the ARCI and the image of the 70th Maggio Fiorentino, the logo for the Myths of Music for Volkswagen, the image for the 100 years of Fiat Avio and the 110 years of the foundation of Juventus, and the Air One brand.
In 2008 he set up the facade of the Ariston and the Casino for the 58th Sanremo Festival.
On the occasion of the European Canoe Championships in Milan he created a light canoe and for the Stav bus companies he created “Festivalbus”, a regular bus decorated with some works.
In October he created a light installation on the facade of Palazzo Penna in Perugia, on the occasion of the “Infinita città” exhibition, curated by Luca Beatrice.
In 2009 he set up in Milan, in Piazza del Duomo, the Rock’n’Music Planet, Europe’s first rock museum, with 25 sculptures representing musical myths.
He participated in the 53rd edition of the Venice Biennale with the installation “Balletto Plastico”, dedicated to the Futurist Theater.
In 2010 he created the FIAT LUX light sculpture for the Mirafiori Motor Village in Turin.
He designed the image of the Umbria Jazz 2010 poster, took part in the Shanghai International Expo and created an iconic sculpture for the Hotel Hilton group.
In 2011 he collaborated with Citroen for an installation in the center of Milan from the name “Citroen Full Electric”.
With the work “CA ‘LODOLA”, he is present at the Venice Biennale 2011.
For its part, Lodola has chosen to favor the advertising communication system. With the peculiarity that has launched a series of faceless figures in the Art galaxy, indistinguishable from interchangeable, undermining precisely that system to which it seems to wink.
The dance, the music hall, the magazines in the fashion magazines of the 1940s to the 1950s are only the stylistic code that allows access to a more complex compositional logic that develops through a progressive estrangement of the user enveloped by an immaterial universe simply made of contours, of lights of colors.
“I beg you,” Marco Lodola told me, “write that I am an electrician. I have a proletarian vision of art. I feel fulfilled only when I manipulate the materials and attack the electric wires which, as if by magic, light my sculptures “In short, an apparently naive fascination hides the sense of alienation that these works contain, highlighting the ritual of transparency that Jean Baudrillard talks about.
“Everywhere you look, the figures emphasize their non-existence, their non-being, almost as if the principle of individual identity were definitively denied.”
Alberto Fiz
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