Urban Interventions is a series of collages by Alexander Dellantonio that take the urban terrain with its rapid changes as the matrix of inquiry, presenting the artists reflections on the city. The strong colours used by the artist echo the city’s images, places, people and situations and tattered billboard posters and manifestos torn off the buildings the militants fly-posted them on are reassembled to show the city and its inhabitants in movement. Dellantonio appropriates parts of the city and seeks to return them to the spectator. In so doing, these works not only engage the urban terrain as a space of politics, they also raise questions about mediation in the context of the current crisis of political representation that is being expressed by movements across the world, whether for example in Tahrir or Syntagma Square, at Occupy Wall Street or during the public sector strikes in the UK.
Articles by Alexander Dellantonio
Alexander Dellantonio studied at the Academy of Art and Design in Bolzano, as well as at the Academy of Fine Art in Florence, Italy. His art practice draws on 1920 avant-garde constructivism, the techniques of collage and décollage, and the reuse of used materials. He takes his inspiration from street life and views his artistic and political activity as intimately interwoven. Over the last two years, he has been very interested in so-called street art, which is one of the guiding threads in his work on tattered manifestos.