Milan-based pop artist and fashion designer, Marco Santaniello, chats with Pandemonia about the work he has been inspired to create based on the living art piece.
Work by Marco Santaniello is being currently being exhibited Combines XL Gallery, Milan and will be on show at PHILLIPS LOUNGE, Montreal- Canada, in next September.
Pandemonia: How did you hear about my work
Marco Santaniello: I’m a big fan of the Internet world, so during my searching I found you through one of my Twitter contacts. I found your art absolutely new, contemporary, amazing and colorful, so really in-line with my POP VIEW.
P: I’m Flattered. Tell me about your work.
MS: I started by doing Pop Art-style Portraits of fashion bloggers and when they put my images on their Facebook and Twitter profiles, I saw that, at a first sight, I could make a really new kind of Pop art. Probably influenced by my love for the Rubik’s Cube, I created my “trademark”- the rainbow behind every portrait. We are all beautiful; we’re all superstars with my wall behind.
Fashion bloggers Terence Sambo, Stefano Guerrini and Chicmuse P: Do you think social media will make the role for conventional superstars change?
MS: I do think Social Media is so good for characters and new-born superstars like us. For too many years people like us suffered because there was no way to be noticed except television and magazines. Now, one has a chance. If he or she lives under a bridge, if you’re really talented today, and of course if you’re good at doing some viral marketing of yourself, you do will get noticed. That’s why we’re talking about PoP art today.
P: So you’re a Pop Artist, What does Pop mean to you?
MS: I don’t really think, as many artists do, that making art must have a specific “strange and mysterious “ meaning. I think Art could be a causality or just something that could grow up in a natural way. Anyway, I think that Pop Art must be an available thing not just for a “lobby” of intellectual people but I want to create a new form of communication between the Artist, me in this case, and the person who wants to have one of my pieces.
P: I'm so flattered that you drew a picture of me. Can you tell me about the image?
MS: Well, I decided to make your pop portrait mainly for the reason I gave you before. I found you fantastic and really interesting. Your image definitely caught my imagination. So here we are now talking about Pop. I love really new things, I always try to make something new. Also in my fashion design, as u may know I created the T-skirt, my fashion patent, a t-shirt that u have to wear upside-down; the result is a sort of Turkish trousers.
P: How do you chose your subjects, what's the criteria.
MS: I’m a pacific anarchist in life and also when I decide what to do or what to make, so all my choices just come in my minds in a moment, then I create.
P: What is a pacific anarchist?
MS: My brain is really wild, totally anarchist and I love the activism, but the word has negative connotations, that’s why I decided to put the word Pacific before it – I’m about peace & love.
P: Who's your favorite pop star?
MS: It might sounds common but I kind of love what
Andy Warhol did at that time and I’ve always been fascinated by his idea of The Factory. Anyway, he made many “mistakes”, I’m talking about the fact that at the end he created more a drugs community then a real factory, but It was just Genius.
P: That was decades ago now, is pop art still relevant? Does it have a different role or is it still very much the same?
MS: You know, When Pop Art happened, it was 1956 - such a different period from now. Of course at that time it was a superb surprise but people didn’t get it for a long time. Is really far too easy to fall in the cliché Andy Warhol, Liechtenstein,etc. for pop artists nowadays, but I think we’re finding new kind of Pop Art.
To see more of Marco Santaniello go to www.marcosantaniello.com
Edited by Laura Havlin
