The exhibition ›MIRAMARE‹ with works by the Italian artist Flavio de Marco focuses on the fantasy dimension of landscapes in the age of mass tourism and online bookings.
The classic landscape image began appearing on postcards, advertising posters and tourism brochures many years ago, and several years ago it began to creep into computer screen landscapes. It has appeared on tour operators' websites, as the background image of airline enquiry forms and as a promising preview of the parks and beaches of major hotel chains.
Today's glossy views of travel destinations on websites like these fuel the desire to be part of that world. Viewing these cleaned-up and edited views is perceived almost as a concrete experience and thus changes the traveler's perception.
Flavio de Marco considers the computer screen as a window to the contemporary world, making it the model, the example of his artistic work and creation. In 1999 he began to use screen shots from tourist websites as the subject of his canvas works, depriving them of any functional aspect: without icons and texts, he transforms the screen display from a virtual place with practical use into a real object that - like a landscape - can only be viewed and cannot be changed.
Since then, Flavio de Marco has been transforming the virtual screen content through the medium of painting. An image on the verge of disappearing, a place from which one can move to the next or disappear from it with a mouse click, becomes a physical surface and reminds us of the preciousness of a world reduced to its digital existence. The goal is no longer to experience another landscape or culture, but to consume a fictional version of our planet, sometimes staged down to the smallest detail and thus artificial and oversimplified.
The exhibition ›MIRAMARE‹ at Lachenmann Art in Konstanz shows a series of large, medium and small format works. The large formats (200x300cm) use the images on the websites of various airlines to illustrate the means by which fantasies are to be realized. A selection of A3-format drawings, which were created in the open air at various locations in the Mediterranean, serve as a counterpoint to the alienated canvas works, which were created in the closed space of the artist's studio exclusively with the help of digital templates.
At the same time, three solo exhibitions of Flavio de Marco's works are currently taking place in Italian museums. In three large, internationally famous museums - the Galleria Sabauda in Turin, the Galleria Estense in Modena and the Palazzo Corsini in Rome - Flavio de Marco's works are presented as a counterpoint to the classical painting of past centuries, which attempted to capture nature not only through perspective representation, but also through, for the most part, enormous detail.
