Marco Evaristti

Marco Evaristti (born 1963) is a Chilean artist who has lived in Denmark since the 1980s.^[1] Evaristti holds a Master´s Degree in Architecture from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts where he was a student of architect Henning Larsen. Throughout the years, he has continued working on private architectural projects as well as larger commission projects. His architecture works contain a blend of Scandinavian, Asian and Latin American approaches. Evaristti uses materials often taken from nature such as diamonds and gold to sperm and blood to create a psychological reaction in the viewer. He goes to countries like Iceland and embellish the natural environment with coloured dye . ^[2]Evaristti uses materials often taken from nature such as diamonds and gold to sperm and blood to create a psychological reaction in the viewer. ^[2]

Pink State

Evaristti claims that Pink State is his own independent state, a state of mind with passport and constitution, but without government control. Although imaginary, He will materialize it from time to time in many of his works.^[2]

Works

In 1995,Evaristti was a visiting professor in Bangkok at the Silipakorn Fine Arts University. While in Bankok, He witnessed over thirty road casualties everyday and accompanied investigators to several accidents. Here he acquired blood and other materials from some of the scenes and used them with ink to paint on canvases. In this way, he was trying to create an image of what disaster might look like. The most important element was the use of real blood. Evaristti quoted Picasso that art is a representation of reality expressed through a lie. However, in this method the blood is real and ties in properly with reality so it is not a lie. He titled this piece "Crash".^[2]

After studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Evaristti gained notoriety for a museum display entitled Helena in 2000 that featured ten functional blenders containing live goldfish. The display, at the Trapholt Art Museum in Kolding, Denmark, invited guests to turn on the blenders. This led to museum director Peter Meyers being charged with and, later, acquitted of animal cruelty.^[3]

In 2001, Evaristti worked on his project "Terrorialista", which is a silver patina bronze sculpture made up of twenty eight parts that together form a complete human body. The pieces are all based on photographic images of human bodies that were blown apart by acts of terror by both sides of the conflict. The allies and enemies, male and female, nationality, religion and everything that made up those people in the photographs had now ceased. Parts of this work are farther explained in the Pink State.^[2]

Evaristti's next major work, in 2004, entitled Ice Cube Project, was to paint the exposed tip of a small iceberg red. This took place on March 24, in Kangia fjord near Ilullissat, Greenland. With two icebreakers and a twenty-man crew, Evaristti used three fire hoses and 3,000 litres (790 US gallons) of paint to color the iceberg blood-red. The artist commented that, "We all have a need to decorate Mother Nature because it belongs to all of us."

On January 13, 2007, Evaristti hosted a dinner party where the main course was agnolotti pasta that was topped with a meatball made with his own fat, removed earlier in the year in a liposuction operation.^[4]

On June 8, 2007, Evaristti draped the peak of Mont Blanc in France with red fabric, along with a 20 foot pole with a flag reading "Pink State". He was arrested and detained on June 6 for attempting to paint the peak red. His aim is to raise awareness of environmental degradation.^[5]

In 2009, Evaristti exhibited his "Body Bags" project. There were three body bags cast in bronze and all in different colors to symbolize the three monotheistic religions. He claimed the body bags were like the modern day image of the skull and reminded people how fragile human life was. By making each resemble a different religion, he was trying to enforce the idea that no matter what ideas you believe in your life will still end in death.^[2]

On January 27, 2010, Evaristti exhibited his artwork "Rolexgate" which is a model of the entrance gate to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. 80% of the model is made up of gold which comes from the teeth of Jews who died in the concentration camps. The model had been briefly exhibited in Berlin, but was removed because of the audience reaction.^[6]

In 2010, Evaristti created his "Boxing Bag" project in which he replaced boxing bags filled with sand and added inside instead hair cut from Christians, Jews, and Muslims. He invited viewers to nudge certain bags aside to get through the pathway. He suggested that a viewer who hit certain bags had a vendetta against that religion. ^[2]

In March 2013, Evaristti painted a frozen waterfall in Hovden, Aust-Agder, Norway red with fruit juice.^[7]

See also

• Shock art

References

External links

• Marco Evaristti