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A first international museum survey of his work in Den Bosch, the city Federico D'Orazio sees as his base camp. His remarkable, rough work full of sex, violence and molested cars can be seen in the Stedelijk Museum (SM's). His latest work of art he created together with recidivists in the prison New Vosseveld in Vught. This work is called: Unseen Paradise/Neon Tattoos. With a large gym bag Federico D’Orazio (1968) appears in the Bossche Stedelijk Museum. The bag is chockfull of material he wants to show: videos, DVDs, scrapbooks and pictures. D’Orazio is not an artist that makes his art in his studio. He is a nomad of art that practically lives in his car and gets his ideas from all around him. A few months a year he teaches aspiring artists at a university in Thailand and he was a teacher/artist-in-residence in Los Angeles. Den Bosch is a sort of base camp to him.
He arrived in the early nineties. At the art academy of Bologna he had signed up for a foreign scholarship. But New York as gone, Berlin disappeared and London too. Then there was Den Bosch. In 1992 he graduated and stayed. “There is chemistry”, he says. “It is a nice, old, centrally located city that reminds me of Italy. I don’t have that feeling in Amsterdam.”
The Stedelijk Museum has an overview exposition of his work. His recent work Full Llove Inn can also be seen. With this work the artist from Den Bosch mobilized the media last year. A pimped car on a scaffolding of 4,5 meters high in front of the Lloyd hotel in Amsterdam. People could rent the car as a hotel room for a night. Three hundred guests stayed in the car. “It was incredible. Press agency Reuters had circulated photos of it. I got reactions from everywhere.” He shows a Romanian newspaper. A picture of his car spray-painted pink on the front page, with his name. In Den Bosch the car cannot be used overnight. The museum is not a hotel, so there is no service. D’Orazio is still working with an art piece that comes from Iraq and that should make the war tangible. He doesn’t want to remark on it. “I don’t want to give away everything. There should be a surprise. The permits aren’t all in order yet.”
Sex, violence, cars. The themes of Federico D’Orazio are not hard. Once he started, as the first, with his “one-minute-video”. He took an old Renault 4 and drove into a wall at great speed. This was recorded on video. Later, in Den Bosch, but in Los Angeles and Noord-Holland as well the Demolition Derby followed, a contest with scrap cars that anybody could enter on a stretch of wasteland in the city. From Bangkok comes the UN-Kadett, an Opel Kadett that was given an UN-logo by D’Orazio. Subsequently the car was riddled with bullets by the artist and his assistants and a scrapping company made it into a small package that was sawn in half and placed in a museum.
The message? That is not so clear. Are we dealing with two clashing cultures here? The inability to jointly arrange something? It is clear that D’Orazio clashes with authorities now and again. Because the Italian can find rotten spots in our society like no other, to subsequently starting picking in it. During his stay in Los Angeles D’Orazio furnished a studio where people, just like on stations, could get their picture taken. Only the portrayed did not receive their pictures. These were hung on a wall. Many Americans pull off their shirt or pants, nipples were being licked and genitals were being shown. Until the police confiscated it all. To the bewilderment of the artist. “I have done the exact same project in Amsterdam. Nothing happened. People pulled some funny faces. That was it.”
In cooperation with 3Tac Federico d’Orazio realized his piece of art ‘Neon Tattoos’ in the correctional facility in Vught.
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