In his career as an art director, he has received over 500 national and international awards. However, to describe his artistic side, one cannot ignore the man with all his neuroses and insecurities, complemented by a collection of aphorisms that, through the irony of his essence, unmistakably outline Lorenzo Marini's personality as an entity capable of generating a microcosm that encapsulates the atmosphere of the years of creative communication.
In his works, it is possible to glimpse a subculture made of art, advertising, and music, all tied together by a love for communication. Marini has made provocation and irony his modus operandi, creating a true artistic philosophy, a compositional genius built around the concept of the artist—a term that seems reductive when applied to him, because Lorenzo Marini is primarily a "Creator."
Your first contact with art?
In Italy, it's impossible to describe the first contact with art because everything around us is art. From our way of living to the culture embedded in our DNA, to the layering of our history. There's only one thing missing in Italy: teaching art history from the first grade. It would be unique in the world and, I believe, very interesting.
When did you realize that art would become more than a passion, a profession?
Art is a form of love. So it can never become a profession. It becomes a job when you stop being in love. From this perspective, there can be no profession without passion. An artist not in love is a mercenary with a stone instead of a heart.
Your first artwork?
I've always drawn, from elementary school onwards. I attended art high school, then the Academy and Architecture together. It's very difficult to pinpoint the start of the wind or draw the end of the sea on maps. I don't know what 'artwork' means. However, while working in communication and graphic design at night, I worked with white spaces, and with mapping and textures of the various whites, like architectures of creation. I did this for twenty years without showing any artwork to any friends. I didn't want to sell anything. I just wanted to collect moments.
A memory that makes you smile?
Every time I get up and drink American coffee. I try to live with a smile always. I smile every time people get angry at a red light because I think about the stupidity of man, who is only happy when the light is green.Forgetting the duality of the world, the average man does not understand that the sun presupposes the rain, the heat presupposes the cold, the mountains presuppose the valleys.
If you could meet an artist from the past, who would it be and what would you ask them?
If I could meet an artist from the past, I would like to meet Rembrandt. I would have only one question for him: how the hell do you do it? This man paints souls. So he must somehow know eternity.
If you met yourself at 18, what advice would you give yourself?
I rarely give advice to others, let alone to myself. But if I could reassure myself about something, I would say that the more time passes, the more you can become a child again.
What is art to you?
It is the sublimation of what is not needed. A jacket can never be a piece of art because it is necessary. A piece of art is wonderfully superfluous. To me, it is the expression of thought, it is the root of life, not its fruit.
June 22, 2024
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