108 - (IT)

108 (Guido Bisagni) was born in Alessandria in 1978. He is considered one of the most important exponent of Post-graffitism in Italy. He started his artistic research with an approach to traditional graffiti. At the end of the '90, after having based in Milan in 1997 and his graduation in Industrial Design, his style evolve in forms and themes: he begins one of the first to use numbers and not letters as a name. His abstract and mysterious figures appear in abandoned places in the streets of Milan, Berlin, London, New York and Paris. He deals also with sculptures, sounds, paintings and installations in a lot of personal and group shows around the world. […]

"After years during which 108 had entrusted his essential shapes exclusively to black, on the occasion of the new exhibition in the gallery's spaces the artist returns to the use of color: it's an instinctive evolution that sees it no longer only as a small rational component largely absorbed by the preponderant irrationality of his dark spots, but which now re-evaluates its sensitive qualities capable of bringing reality closer to the spiritual sphere, in a process strongly inspired by Huxley's writings concerning perception and by Kandinsky's color theory. Abstract but organic, these works avoid the laws of geometry and arise from chance and from the repetitions that govern nature; concise and yet perfectly eloquent, they also formally reflect the duality of their essence, as black is at the same time plenitude and emptiness, and in addition «it's externally the most toneless color, against which all other colors, even the weakest, sound stronger and more precise».

Through an approach similar to the automatic one employed by surrealists or, even better, by mediums and shamans, 108 abandons the control of reason and entirely refers to the unconscious his all-encompassing artistic practice, which includes and combines various suggestions – above all, the Twentieth century avant-gardes, the primordial cults and popular traditions of his Piedmont, Eastern cultures and religions – but also his daily life and the absolute need to transcend it. As in a private ritual, or as during a lucid dream – in which one is aware that one is dreaming and therefore it becomes possible to control its narrative – through his art 108 invents and molds his surrounding reality, offering a privileged view on the dreamlike dimension that always shines through his works." (Michela D'Acquisto for "Sogno Lucido" solo show 2019)