Neo Collective
My painting project, which is named In The Crowd, is crowded with people. It is a sort of obsession, a passion, an attraction towards such intrinsic human blocks. A lot of different lives put together in stand-by as a single mass. I am deeply interested in all of those feelings that are enlivening body and soul of the crowd: assault, delirium, waiting, compactness, melting pot and the ungovernable. The crowd takes possession and control of the painting space, until choking space itself. It is horror vacui, probably. The crowd moves, acts and unites as of under the control of an abstract leadership. The crowd is self-controlled breeding and bringing into being an inner equilibrium. The crowd is composed by several people that are moving all together, everybody following the same rhytm, becoming one mass individual, emitting a single sound-noise. The project In The Crowd, produces it’s first painting in 2009 but it is in the summer of 2011 that the project is resumed and developed, giving life to four other paintings. In The Crowd is a work in progress now in full production. In The Crowd does not have a long history but it is becoming a growing reality. In The Crowd is entirely produced with brushes (n.3/0 to n.20), acrylic paint, on large canvases at least three meters by two meters.
Describe yourself with 10 words.
Demanding, obsessive, passionate, genuine, discipline, resolute, flavoured, in layers, vintage, crispy.
Describe your work with 10 words
Attack, delirium, waiting, compactness, brushes, melting pot, stand-by, sharp, horror vacui, contemporary.
Who´s the first artist/photographer that comes to your mind first?
John Waters
Tell us a little bit about yourself, where do you come from and where is your journey going to?
My name is Francesca Bifulco and I was born in 1986, in southern Italy. I am not what you would call a meek person but one that is working hard to build a precise painting identity .The strong desire to have my own creative autonomy has prompted me to leave Rome, the city where I lived, studied and worked for about 6 years and with my load of paintings and brushes I left for Los Angeles, where I’m writing from. I felt it was time to do what I do best. It was a need of mine. I painted my first crowd of 2×3 meters in 2009, and ended there. After two years spent doing various other things and getting encouraged by people, both close to and far from me as well, I have decided to get to work on a series entitled “In The Crowd”. I always used my sign on paper, but without much thought until I realized that mine was probably a real technique with its own dignity, especially for the fact that I learned it out from nowhere and then I said to myself -why so much effort ? To hell with the course of academic painting techniques! I will continue to use the brushes as I always did. This time the larger paintings I’ll be able to put my hand on the better. Now In The Crowd is in full growth and, in the near future I would like to go beyond the simple canvas and steer the project towards an installation perspective.
How would you describe your style?
My sign is essential. An eye will never be a realistic eye, a mouth that will never be a real mouth. Two, three, four, ten strokes that cross directions always different. It is an idea of the eye, and so for the rest of the body shapes. It is a maze of lines that do not travel to the event but draw definite forms. I think I work in the field of figurative but with rules that do not follow a logic all its own. What I know for sure is that I manage the brushes without much thought.
Your house is on fire, what do you save?
My Woodstock vinyl, a pair of boots and my works because are in the lab.
Something you want the world to know about you?
I’m a very clean person: I do change my panties three times everyday. Then I’m a stakhanovite, I deeply believe in what I do in all creative honesty.
Tell us a song that has haunted you.
This week is “Brighter”, the new album of WhoMadeWho.
What keeps you motivated and inspires you go to on every day?
The consciouness that I’m doing exactly what I do best and hope to live with it forever. I know I made a promise to myself before others and want to keep it at all costs. Los Angeles also is giving me great charge from this point of view.
What did you want to be with 13?
I do not remember who I wanted to be at 13. I used to change my mind often.The only thing I remember is that always wanted to be sick to evade school when I had math schoolwork.
How have you handled the business side of being an artist?
You can not invest more of themselves by themselves, at some point you need to find the right person who wants to do it on you. Let’s say I am now looking for a sponsor for my installation project which I hope to achieve soon. I stretch more and more and then more money are needed.
What can we accept from you in 2012, any concrete plans?
Right now I am finishing the paintings and working on new ones, in mid-May there will be an exhibition of mine at ADC&Building Bridges in Los Angeles, in the Bergamot Station Arts Complex, if you are around pop in!