Angelo Musco (visual artist)
Angelo Musco (born Naples Italy, 3 February 1973) lives and works in New York City and has since 1997. This contemporary artist is best known for photographic surreal landscapes built by thousands of [...] bodies, where the natural architectures and visionary landscapes are filled with the haunting mysticism of his own origins.
Early years
The youngest of five children, Angelo weighed in at 6.5 kilos (approximately 14.3 lbs.) when he was born after spending 11 months in the womb. A home birth to a child of this size was complicated; Angelo became stuck and turned blue, and the midwife panicked. Her determined extraction caused serious damage to both mother and baby. The newborn was rushed to the hospital, being in a critical state, and was stripped of his baby clothes. Musco's aunt, uncle, and father returned to the household with the soiled clothes, upon seeing which, Angelo's mother fell into a state of shock, thinking the child had died. The extreme stress spoilt her breast milk. Both mother and son survived, but young Musco was paralyzed on his right side for the first years of his life.
Musco's birth injury is called Erb's Palsy, a tearing of the neck, arm and shoulder nerves. It causes permanent damage and diminishes the function of the affected side of the body. An operation to fix the damage was scheduled, but when an illness impeded Angelo's participation on the scheduled day, his superstitious mother translated the sickness as an omen not to have the risky procedure. Instead, Angelo spent the first ten years of his life in physical therapy, to strengthen and restore the injured side of his body.
His early years were spent in school or at his father’s grocery store helping deliver the daily orders in the neighborhood Barra, just east of Naples. His parents sent him to a private Catholic school because they felt Angelo would need special attention. The school was situated on the water, and he was often entertained by high-speed boat chases as the police hunted down smugglers with black-market contraband. He would draw the boats not realizing how emblematic it was of the dangerous environment of living in Naples in the 1970s. He started university at the Academia Di Belle Arti in Naples and took a small apartment in the historic part of the city, which was very dangerous at that time. This new home was located next to the Napoli Sotteranea, a subterranean second city. The mysticism, history and legends of this old city destroyed by Mount Vesuvius were an ongoing fascination for the young artist.
For two semesters Musco lived in Granada, Spain as an exchange student. The school was well funded with wonderful labs and equipment for students to use. Musco was not well funded and work serving tea at night in an old Arab teteria to make money to survive since his family could only afford to cover his rent. Because purchasing materials for painting was also expensive, he started experimenting with installations and different materials such as fire, stones and the bodies of his fellow colleagues. This was the first approach towards using the human body to create artistic forms. Musco visited New York City a few times for artistic research, and moved to the U.S. December 8, 1997. This date holds symbolic significance because it is the Catholic Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a public holiday in Italy.
Work
Recurring themes relate to his difficult birth, such as confinement, subterranan worlds, and natural architecture. The human body has taken more and more space in his work, often weaving and connecting masses of [...] bodies in mosaics creating constructions that are literal or symbolic representations of eggs, nests, amniotic fluid and other inspirations from the miracle of procreation.
Since arriving in the States, Musco has held photo shoots in private and public spaces and are increasingly more complicated (Production Video). A photo shoot can become an event onto itself, involving volunteers, models, businesses and government institutions.
His work and research has evolved over the years. Musco’s investigation into the power of aggregations found in nature such as sperm during egg fertilization, an ant colony, beehive or a school of fish has fueled his most recent works. His visionary translation of such aggregation on a massive scale is not only visible in his work but is also palpable during his photo shoots.
Hadal
In 2009 Musco was invited to show his Hadal photo installation at Unconditional Love, presented by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, in the 53rd Annual Venice Biennale.
Tehom
In 2010, after two years of production, Musco presented his first solo show in the United States at the Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago. A short video documentary was made showing the complicated installaion. The title piece is made up of 22 individual panels measuring a total of 12' x 48'.
Parthenogenesis
While researching ideas of pre-birth in 2005, Musco realized New York and Naples were on the same latitude. Wanting to explore this coincidence he conceived of an installation of short videos with a recurring script happening in eleven different cities around the world all on the 41st parallel. The number eleven relates to the number of months his mother carried him in the womb. An exhaustive trip was mapped out from NYC to Viseu, Portugal; Madrid, Spain; Naples, Italy; Istanbul, Turkey; Baku, Azerbaijan; Beijing, China; Aomori, Japan; Redwood National Park, CA; Salt Lake City, UT; and Lincoln, NE. Unique experiences included filming in the Forbidden City, the threat of a religious commission at the Blue Mosque, and seeing firsthand the shocking existence of families living in the oilfields of Baku.
Video
External links
Bibliography
- Operaprena (Charta 2003)
- Instant Book: Italian Artists New York (Charta 2009)
References
- Chicago Tribune July 2, 2010
- http://www.secristgallery.com/news/