Rome Archives - Things&Ink

July 27, 2016July 27, 2016

Exhibition: Exit Voto

Our Italian contributor Ilaria Pauletti chatted to Rossana Calbi the curator of Exit Voto, the latest exhibition at Parione9 in Rome, on until August, 7th…

morg_sant'orsola (1)

More than 100 artists were involved in Rossana’s Exit Voto, and among them are some talented Italian tattooists including Miss Juliet, Diletta Lembo and Morg Armeni.

Everyone of the chosen artists had the task of recreating a holy picture on paper. They were all completely free from any obligation or limitations, Rossana simply choose the theme and the medium.

As you may already know, ex-voto is an offering given in order to fulfil a vow, normally the offerings are given to saints or divinities in gratitude or devotion (hence the Latin term, short for ex voto suscepto, “from the vow made”).
Rossana played with this ancient term to show a way that we can exit or enter the holiness that can be found in the everyday, and a way to explore other’s affinities with the divine.

diletta lembo_santa felicita When did the idea of this ambitious project come to you, how did it evolve to become what it is now exposed in the Roman gallery?
The theme of the representation of holiness has interested me for a long time. In 2011 I curated the exhibition Carpe Viam in Elsa Morante multi-functional complex of Rome, in that case the idea was to understand the artistic representation of holiness along the way. In that project were artists who have also been involved in EXIT VOTO, Marianna Pisanu and Pelin Santilli. Following Virgil’s admonition, carpe viam, I embarked on this journey and last year I decided to work with a hundred artists that could reinvent the holy pictures that I saw in the drawers of my grandmother’s home.

Have you commissioned a representation of each saint, giving total control to the artist or have you given them some guidelines? The only instructions I give when curating an exhibition is the theme, format, and in this case the medium- paper. What interests me and what I think is gripping is the development of each project, I love to see how each artist evolves the theme with different techniques and perspectives.

lucrezia U_santa vitalia_low
When did you decide to include tattooists and not just artists or painters? I do not make a distinction between the arts: cartoonists, illustrators, painters and tattoo artists for me are always just artists. I work without categorising the expression and choices of any artist.

What is your personal relationship with the faith?
I need to believe in something greater than me, I need to do this because I need a warning and above all hope.

And with the art of tattooing?
I was interested in the tattoo world when I was younger. I’m always very curious to see the pictures and study the ties they have with the people. Tattooing represents the evolution of symbols on the skin. Understanding the choices and the need to have a mark on the skin means you understand a lot about the individual and also of the group.

miss juliet_santa gertrude di nivelles

I personally think that tattooing is an act of faith, about trusting yourself. Deciding to change your body, to explore a feeling or taking control of your body, is an important gesture. What do you think about it? Do you have any tattoos? I got a tattoo of a lily when I was 18, and I never liked the result. The ink exploded transforming the design into something poorly defined. It took me years to trust a tattoo artist again. Well, I chose Nicoz Balboa to cover the tattoo on my shoulder with another lily, that should have been there in the first place.

Zoe Lacchei_The Penitent Magdalene_low

What is the Exit Voto that represents you the most? The holy picture that struck me the most is the ‘Maddalena Penitente (Penitent Magdalene)’ by Zoe Lacchei. As I said before I do not give guidance on the realisation of the work, but Zoe Lacchei heard what I was trying to produce with the title. But there are also works that I have enjoyed and that can eliminate the heaviness of my spirit, including the ‘Saint Honoré’ painting by Riccardo Bucchioni.

April 7, 2016April 7, 2016

Morg Armeni Solo Art Show

Our Italian contributor Ilaria Pauletti attended the opening night of artist and tattooist Morg Armeni’s first solo art show in Rome. Ilaria chatted to Morg about the art she has showcased and the process behind it…

Morg’s gallery of artwork title ‘Morgasmatron_redemption through delight’ has been curated by Marta Bandini and Elettra Bottazzi, at Parione9 in Rome. The exhibition displays some of her most recent works and some of her deepest emotions.
In fact, Morg portrays her journey through life, love and suffering, while giving the feminine figure a new role.
The skills in detailed paintings and the refined technique allowed the artist to play with different materials: oils on canvas but also on wood and thin paper.I think every person could relate to one piece more than to one other, but they were all connected to me, from the least to the most recent.

How do you feel when you start a new painting? And when you finish it?
When I start painting I feel like I’m in a round room with many doors that I can open, behind each of them is a world of meanings and symbols for me to use. It’s the feeling of having infinite possibilities.When it comes to the end I feel like a mother taking care of her child. If everything I have created is in its right place, I feel at peace but I am also inspired to create my next piece.

What piece of work, that you have shown in the gallery, best represents you?Probably the work that represents me and how I am now is The Creator. Undoubtedly because it is the last oil work I’ve painted and also because it touches the issue that I want to always keep in mind. We are the creators of our present, and we can go beyond our difficulties or the feelings of fear of sadness that limit us. We can become again our sacred temple of love, for ourselves and for life, creating our present and, consequently, the future in the most natural and harmonious way.

Do you find painting therapeutic? I find that facing your own ideas and convictions, represented in a figurative way, through painting, often puts me in front of sides of myself that I would not otherwise see. The hours I spend in solitude painting, often means I realise that I have some unresolved issues that I need to work on. This is very therapeutic for me. Often, looking retrospectively at my paintings makes me see more clearly the emotional situations that I’m going through and my growth, or at least the direction that I’m pursuing.

How important is to be yourself and get literally naked for art?
I think it’s everything, but I also believe that it is a time consuming process. Initially, when your painting technique is immature, you need to take inspiration from the great masters and sometimes imitation can distort your own style and nature. With time we can break away from this and this is how we find our true selves. I believe this is the most real art expression.

Morg’s solo show is at Parione 9 until 17th April

Photos by Diana Bandini

January 15, 2016

Interview with Morg Armeni

Our Italian contributor Ilaria Pauletti chatted to Morg Armeni a travelling tattooist and artist, about how Morg puts her soul into everything she does and how her passion for life is felt by all…

Your style is very traditional but you have put your own stamp on the genre, did you choose to tattoo in this way or did it choose you? It’s nice to think that ‘he’ chose me, and it can be true, in some ways. I love to put my own sort on magic into the tattoos I do. I actually use symbols that are familiar to me, coming from art, my musical background, and everything I like. Then I recreate an image that conceptually can be interpreted in various ways.
I like to imagine an idea, but also its opposite, both in colours and shapes. The contrasts are what make the difference.

When did you fall in love with art and tattoos? Since I was very small, even in kindergarten, my grandfather used to take me to Staglieno (a monumental cemetery in Genova). I could stay there for hours, I was fascinated by those beautiful statues and bas-reliefs.
I started drawing when I was 12-years-old, and I went to see my first exhibition, well the first I chose to see, which was Dalí After that I fell even more in love with art. At art school, in addition to learning the techniques of drawing, I studied the history of art and I loved ancient and medieval art. My love for tattoos was born from a fascination with the mystery and the underground scene in the 80s. All my musical idols were tattooed, and it was also thanks to them that I wanted to be tattooed.

It seems like you have a sixth sense when you are about to create something for your clients, you always find the best way to draw any subject. What are your methods for researching and creating a tattoo? I try to get to know the client first and understand how I can translate their idea into a tattoo. I prepare a first drawing and then I simplify it, sometimes I also use photographs as references to edit my subjects. Often people are attracted to my imagination, and I think I accurately transform what a clients wants into a drawing.I like it when they trust my interpretation and my style of art.

Do tattoos leave a mark on your life, as much as on the client’s ?
Yes, of course! I put a lot of love into the creation of the subjects I tattoo. Often my customers and I reach a sort of harmony during the tattooing process and ritual which creates very positive vibrations that resurface when I happen to see them again.

There are many differences between your paintings and your tattoos. Can you tell us the main ones? The main differences are the canvas and the techniques. I have to consider that the skin changes and ages, and that my customers will have my tattoos forever on their skin. With regard to the tattoo, I try to make sure that the subject represents and fits the wearer. I play with the customer’s ideas until the concept becomes a workable tattoo. That’s why I love sharp lines and contrasts.

In painting, I am definitely more surreal and visionary. For instance, I love micro realistic details for my paintings, but you won’t see many of them in my tattoos. I am in constant evolution in both fields, and both have my dedication.

You have some really amazing pieces (by Rob Admiraal and Rudy Fritsch, just to name a few). Who else have you been tattooed by? Who do you plan to get tattooed by in the future?
I’m very proud of my tattoos and they make me happy, and these two guys you mentioned have been among the greatest inspiration I have had.
I also have pieces by Amanda Toy, Monga, Angelique Houtkamp and many others! I have a lot of talented friends from whom I would like to be tattooed by.
The list never ends!

I am still so in love with the artwork you created that was exhibited at Somerset House. Can you tell us more about the whole process? I was excited when I got asked to contribute to this great event! I gave it my all to create something worthy of a museum like Somerset House.

It took me a month to decide what to paint, but it came to me in a dream and I created Flora’s clock. It really exists and is composed of different species of flowers, from all around the world, that open or close at a given time, so the flowers can be used like a clock to tell the time. The painting represents time, seasons, beauty, inner growth and realization of what we are, in the here and in the now.
Now I am also focused on some new paintings that will be exhibited in March at my solo show in Rome.

Can you tell us why you decided to close your own studio in Genova? I let go a part of my life, yes. I closed my studio because I wanted to change, taking off a bit of bureaucracy, only dedicating myself to art and creation.
I will surely do some guest spots in London and in Milan, (Milano City Ink and Oink Farm) and now I’m living in Rome and guesting in some great studios.

And finally do you have any personal advice for our readers?
I highly recommend to people, and also to myself, to spread positive feelings, as much as possible! So that we can change and affect more and more the reality around us and to improve the world in which we all live. It’s hard work but we can do it!

October 14, 2015October 14, 2015

Tattoo Portraits

Alessandro Negrini a.k.a Pepe, an Italian tattoo artist resident at Electric Tattooing Viareggio and his wife Romina have created a book titled Tattoo Portraits, in which his love and respect for the history of tattooing is displayed in beautiful watercolour. Our Italian contributor Ilaria chatted to Pepe to find out more about the book, his love of tattoo history and why he chose the medium of watercolour…

When and how did you discover the art of tattoo?
It all began in Viareggio, in the early 90s. At that time it was none other than the holiday location where I spent my summer holidays with the family. This city, where I now work and live, represented anything an adolescent could ever imagine: there were sailors with tattoos, punks, metal music, skateboarding and surfing activities. Coming from a small town, all of this was very exciting to my eyes!

What do you think of modern society and its relationship with this art?
I think that this media overexposure has removed a sense of it all. You know, it’s my job and I earn some money, but in these twenty years I have seen a complete twist from what was originally the world of tattoo.
When I started professionally in 1996 (at Skin Fantasies, Bergamo) tattoo was frowned upon, it was just an act of rebellion and nonconformity. Nowadays tattoos are on football players, on television and in glossy magazines. Today people get tattooed to join the mass, to be cool or to be accepted by the group. 15 or 20 years ago you couldn’t even get into a local bar if you had tattoos in sight.
I mean, I do not want to be a rebel at any cost, but now getting a tattoo is like buying a nice shirt. What will happen when these people will want/will have to change their aesthetic tastes, as our mothers asked: “what will you do with those tattoos when you become old”?

People you have portrayed are definitely a continuous inspiration for you, both in life and in work. Tell us more about your project!
My project came mainly from an urgency, a need that resided in my guts. My life has changed dramatically in the recent years thanks to the arrival of my son. I am sober for a year and a half and painting had a great therapeutic impact during this transformation. I portrayed the great masters of the past, who have founded the basics of our profession, those who were called “poor Rembrandts” in a world diametrically opposed to ours. After preparing a first set of watercolours, the project grew thanks to the meeting with my partner Romina, professional editor, who wrote our book Tattoo Portraits, she did amazing research regarding the biographies of these tattoo artists . The book is now published and distributed by Surith, Rome.

How did the mere fact of changing ‘means of expression’ and then to paint with watercolours make you feel?
The world of watercolour has always been present in my life. Even before tattoos, it came with my love for comics and with them for adventure: Hugo Pratt was my favourite cartoonist and one of his peculiarities was that he decorated the first introductory pages of his books with beautiful watercolours.
Occasionally this passion came, went away and then came back again, like the water and the waves… I began to experiment with it during the years of art school and then used it only for entertainment in the evening or to rest after a day of hard work. The tattoo, as well as its exemplary drawings, what are called “tattoo flash”, are characterized by an extremely rigid and schematic technique. You trace the outline, then the shadows and finally the color. There is no room for the unexpected. Everything is precise, programmed. Watercolour is the exact opposite, the water flows unpredictable on the sheet, the brush flies fast and the result is never predictable. After twenty years as a tattoo artist I felt the need to find all of this, to dissolve the hand to the emotions, letting myself go: into the unknown, the unexpected and the adventure from which I started.

The history of the tattoo is, at least in my opinion, a part of each tattoo, be it big or small, done with great care.. The simple fact that the man is the mean by which this art continues to live and to be handed down from generation to generation is really beautiful. How important is for you the past and how it helped you to embark on your path?
The tattoo is first of all a sign, a gesture, a symbol. It marks the difference between what you were before and what you are after, like the difference between a donkey and a zebra. It may be little as the dot marked between the index finger and thumb, symbol of love for Japanese geishas, or huge like the entire Polynesian bodies of people from Tahitian islands. The gesture is always the same, inserting a pigment (usually derived from coal) under the skin, through the use of different enforcement tools, from the shark tooth to the most modern rotary machines. The artist who now tattoos on television makes the same gesture that the primitive man performed in the caves during the Neolithic.
Ötzi, the man of Similaun, the oldest mummy found on the Earth, (dated from between 3300 and 3200 BC) is in fact also tattooed, and it is considered the first tattooed human being: on Ötzi body there are 61 tattoos!
I mean, you can not tattoo without knowing the history of tattooing. Tattoo and mankind continue to intersect chronologically along the latitudes and longitudes of the whole world. The history of the electric tattoo begins in the late ‘800 with Samuel O’Reilly and reaches us, ‘Tattoo Portraits’, both in a book and with an exhibition, (currently on display at the gallery Parione9 in Rome). This project of mine aims to provide a tool to the new generations, to know and deepen the roots of the history of tattoo, as we know it today in the West. The 60 portraits that form the book, “tattooed faces” and “blue ladies”, are just the beginning of a natural evolution through my new pictorial work of watercolors. It aims to tell and preserve some kind of a family album, a collection of images from a far away world, preserving through its pages the history and memory of us men and women, tattooed and tattoo artists of the 2000s.

His artworks are now on display in Rome, at Parione9, a solo show curated by Elettra Bottazzi and Marta Bandini.
You can email Pepe at pepetattooing@hotmail.com to purchase the book, and follow him on Facebook to here more news about his project.

Photos taken by Diana Bandini, Nicola Gnesi and Vasco Maria Livio.

September 15, 2015September 15, 2015

Interview with Tattoo Artist: Alessandro Lemme

Our Italian contributor Ilaria chatted to tattoo artist Alessandro Lemme who works out of Psycho Tattoo studio in Rome. His clean lines and selective colour palette lend themselves to the world of traditional tattoos.

When I first saw your work on Instagram, I knew right away that the tattoos had been made by an artist who had real passion in his blood. Did you always know you would become a tattooist? I don’t think it was a flash of inspiration but rather a path. It starting from painting and drawing (that I have always cultivated), and from the first tattoos seen on other people. It all developed gradually, as my interest for tattoos increased, not only the ones on myself but also the ones I made for others.

How do you feel now that you are doing what you love? Very lucky, and grateful.

What fascinates you the most about the history of tattooing? And tattooing itself? I believe that, in a world that is becoming increasingly abstract and dull, chained to masks and superficial appearances of yourself, the tattoo continues to be a powerful means of self-determination and concrete aesthetics. It is a re-appropriation of your own body and your own inner life, with flesh, blood and symbols, and therefore reality and truth.

The colours you use for your tattoos denote a great love for the past and at the same time they are traditional yet delicate. Do you agree? I hope so, although I do not think they are so unique and rare. I don’t know if we can call it nostalgia, but I think that wherever there is love and respect for the history and the past, there will always be good tattoo artists.

You can create a strong and fierce subject, like a tiger, and at the same time a romantic and mysterious one, like a mermaid. What are your everyday inspirations? The tattoo artists of the past, that’s for sure. I can produce and draw what I want, but I could never create something that coincides with my idea of tattooing without their inheritance. In my ideal tattoo shop, drawings are chosen from the flash sheets affixed to the walls. I do not think at all that perpetuating (even without inventing) is demeaning. There is no doubt that there are and have been great and brilliant innovators of style and iconography, but our world – at least up to a certain point and period – has often had little to do with the ‘real artists’, as it has been composed mostly by people who have just ‘done tattoos’.

What are the subjects you would like to tattoo but you havent’t yet? The Rock of Ages, perhaps the king among the subjects of traditional style. It’s my dream and I hope it will come true!

Tell us about the first tattoo you got and also about the most recent. Two different times on the same skin. What are the differences (if any)? My first tattoo was a Viking on my right shoulder, I was almost 17 years old. I remember that there wasn’t a lot of tattoo shops to choose from and the flash was limited: warriors, tribal and then fairies for girls! Coming from a metal environment, the decision of what subject to get wasn’t difficult! The last needles to hurt my skin were those who traced the lines of my back, by Alessandro Turcio. Two tigers fighting, immersed in vegetation, including palm trees, roses and butterflies. I think the difference consists essentially in the knowledge and preparation regarding the subject, and in the awareness of getting tattooed by an artist I trust.

Do you admire other artists? Do you have any values that you would never give up? I admire anybody who is sincere in what he does and who knows how to do it well. Both those who decide to remain stubbornly in the furrow and those who try to climb over it. Every person and artist who is good, skilled, experienced and humble.

How important is humility for you? Both in your life and in the customer/tattoo artist relationship. It often seems that those who are full of themselves manage to attract and convince as many customers as possible. I believe that, after all, it is nothing more than a state of mind, a distinctive feature of some characters: what brings you to consider yourself to be close to others, rather than constantly trying to walk over their head.

Will you be doing any guest spots abroad? Yes, I will be in London, at the Family Business, from 5th to 9th October!