EASYPOP COLLECTION
Dal 15 al 28 maggio 2025 a Roma
Micro Arti Visive
We humans are made like this, we need heroes. Figures that offer us keys to understanding the world. And who are our superheroes today? Often characters from a comic, a movie, a video game. We come across them everywhere, we wear them on t-shirts, we collect them on shelves. Characters that at first glance seem just stories, but in reality, without us realizing it, speak to us, to our fears, our desires, our eternal battles. Then if these heroes are revisited with a new language, just like Roberto Mazzeo does, rethinking them through classic works of art and in unusual contexts, then they become doubly heroes.
They bring with them multiple levels of interpretation. The first time I saw a work by Roberto Mazzeo, known in the art world as Easypop, I felt a mixture of familiarity and lightheartedness. I knew those characters, of course, I have seen them and re-seen them a thousand times. But in his works it is like looking at a childhood friend in a new light, and discovering that he has an interior world of unexpected richness. Because his creations are not a simple reference to the already seen. They trigger a conceptual short circuit, alienating and powerful, precisely because of their collision with "high" art. Mazzeo plays with a bold mix between the pop universe and the great classical masterpieces, which amuses and displaces.
Let's take for example his "Bugs Bunny" which ironically reinterprets the myth of Cupid and Psyche, or "Cops and Robbers" where two Japanese cartoons embrace in a kiss that explicitly quotes the painting by Francesco Hayez. It is precisely this dialogue with the solemnity of art that makes us perceive the imperfect humanity of these modern icons, making them strangely close, human, prisoners like us of their (im)possible weaknesses.
I strongly wanted this exhibition that will open its doors from 15 to 28 May 2025 in the spaces of Micro because there is something ironic and profound at the same time. His art goes beyond the appearance of pop and analyzes our collective imagination with intelligence and subtle humor. Mazzeo elevates these contemporary "symbols" to tools to better understand our human nature. He shows us how, behind the costumes and superpowers, there are the same questions as always about love, death, our place in the world.
And then there is his latest research, the fresco tear-offs. A laborious technique that Mazzeo has made his own. The choice is not accidental: in an era in which everything is digital, volatile, ready to disappear with a click, he carries out an operation against the current. He paints on fresh plaster with natural earths and then physically tears the work from the wall and transfers it to canvas. An action that is both destruction and preservation.
Something ancient that becomes surprisingly contemporary.
Tearing these digital heroes, ephemeral by definition, born to be infinitely reproduced on screens, and transforming them into unique pieces, with their own physicality and imperfection. It is as if Mazzeo wanted to save these characters from their fleeting destiny, giving them the same importance as works of art that last over the centuries.
Because it's not just about superheroes, but about figures out of context, hybridized in a playful mix with classical art. Napoleon crossing the Alps by David transforms into the legendary steel Jeeg Robot on horseback, or Solomon's Ajax who is reborn as Superman with his unmistakable "S" on his chest, or Byrne-Jones' Rose Heart who becomes a melancholic Snow White... and so on, in a succession of ironic, paradoxical situations full of disruptive creativity.
In a bulimic era of disposable images, Easypop strips us of the illusion of really knowing them, almost as if to tell us that beyond their glossy surface a fragment of our history pulsates. Because perhaps, while they delude us into thinking we're distracted, these modern heroes are also telling us something important about who we are.
© Paola Valori