Simone Marini | PIOMONTI ARTECONTEMPORANEA

New Directions 
critical essay by Achille Bonito Oliva – Miltos Manetas 
27 sep 2018 – 03 nov 2018

Simone Marini, with these new works, does not want to make a hymn to social networks, but to become
aware of the great power that the internet has in the contemporary society. Know and don’t underestimate
the tool to possibly dominate its or at least keep its under control. Facebook, for example, from “simple”
entertainment for kids to the elderly, has become the tool to convey information to be used in the electoral
field!

10 sculptures, plates and road signs, conceived as possible new headings of the streets of metropolitan
cities; are plates identical to the municipal ones, in marble those in the wall and in iron and aluminum road
signs, with names like “Via Facebook, Piazza Twitter, Via Youtube, Piazza Internet, Via Instagram, etc.”

“Thus the work serves to develop the tension to question, and the renewed signage of Marini wishes to
highlight the anthropological shift of humanity in a virtual dimension while at the same time being blocked
by its technological paraphernalia.

By definition, road signs are destined for a mass of users who meet and collide randomly and voluntarily. The name taken from the web seems to force the passerby out of their reserveness and domestic isolation to face others with whom to share their appointment of the place. 

The sculptural use of this signage highlights a Duchampian tradition, with the difference that in our case
there is no object trouvée, but rather the construction and highlighting of a probably cynically removed
reality”(Achille Bonito Oliva).

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