
ENRICO MANERA Asmara, 1947
Deceive Enrico Manera with that cheerful demeanor, which could be defined as typically Italian. It’s hard not to try to imagine him when he was very young, attending the ateliers of Schifano, Festa, Angeli, and a whole world of extraordinary stimuli that anoints him as the artist he is destined to become. Deceive, because the frivolous appearance then reveals an unsuspected composure and an unusual determination in the balanced openness to listening, tempered by trust in his own intuitive sensitivity and the vision of his artistic path.



ENRICO MANERA Asmara, 1947
Deceive Enrico Manera with that cheerful demeanor, which could be defined as typically Italian. It's hard not to try to imagine him when he was very young, attending the ateliers of Schifano, Festa, Angeli, and a whole world of extraordinary stimuli that anoints him as the artist he is destined to become. Deceive, because the frivolous appearance then reveals an unsuspected composure and an unusual determination in the balanced openness to listening, tempered by trust in his own intuitive sensitivity and the vision of his artistic path. Manera proudly preserves the mark of those years in his work and holds high the torch of that experience in his history. Meeting him means getting close to a time when widespread creativity realizes what was already theorized as art/life with the first avant-garde movements. It is in this way that he coexists with those high spirits, rebellious and inspired, untamed and self-destructive, learning the craft of art, focusing on living matter to then translate it into his own expressive codes. He dedicates a memoir book with an explicit title, "Cafè Des Artistes," to those master-friends, precious in its direct and engaging nature, rich in anecdotes, and far from rhetoric. In Rome, it is the era of the Piper Club, where psychosensory and psychedelic dynamics are experimented with, quite astonishing, which translate into creative achievements that will soon populate art exhibitions, Quadrennials, and Biennials. These are the years that follow the Beat Generation when music represents a magnetic pole of aggregation. Art is connected to musical events with light shows, projections that follow the rhythmic excitement with visual movement and the colorful effects of gels. Around music, a prolific underground scene develops, influencing ways of being, thinking, dressing, and giving rise to a counterculture necessary for information and artistic inspiration. Creative experimentation owes much to pop culture as well as to a new deconstructed language resulting from a "on the road" feeling that aims to extend creativity beyond narrow boundaries, enacting a revolutionary action of democratization. A vibrant youth movement sensitive to social issues comes to life. Underground magazines are born, experimenting with new forms of communication, like the comic book that sharply distances itself from the prudish Disneyesque comics, subverting the icons of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, asserting the right to freedom of rebellion against any kind of dominant censorship. It is in this climate that the roots of the artist Enrico Manera grow stronger. But through these roots, Manera connects and absorbs creative energy also from a more distant past and draws nourishment from the evolving present. The artists of the so-called Scuola di Piazza del Popolo are active interpreters of the experience of historical avant-gardes, reinterpreted and reformed with a renewed spirit of the time. These are the years of economic boom and media zoom and then profound cracks (due to the rubbish that the overflowing river of the underground carries along). Manera is a student and witness, friend and artist, growing and intuiting. By positioning himself beyond (even in terms of generational distance), he remains whole and lighthearted, refining an instinctive inclination for playful irreverence, a creative drive that, in creating the sculptural portrait of Schifano, leads him to open the large head made of resin and brass, applying inside it a diorama of lights modulated by sounds and noises. Thus, he makes visible the special effects of that receptive, pulsating, and contorted mind of the great artist that Mario Schifano was. The ludic value, as in any good game, presupposes a system of decipherable rules that engage the observer. This recognizable attitude, for example, can be found in "Chi pensa male Malpensa," not only for the play on words but also for the arrangement of the airplanes as if it were a game table. A similar effect is achieved in "Tana," this time with warplanes in action. Here, as elsewhere, toy weapons shift the temporal perspective from adulthood to childhood. The focus is on the impulsivity of egoistic instincts based on material values and the desire for immediate gain, like those of children, which, if present in adults determining the fate of the world, suggest, in contrast, the emergence of monstrosity. The technique of defusing - through color, mixed media, and/or direct verbal insertions - is also active in the numerous tributes paid to cultural heritage (the great masters of art in the EX series or revolutionary -isms of the 20th century) placed on an equal footing with contemporary characters, themes, and icons, just as the glossy glamour universe of the star system is juxtaposed with burning social issues, like the electric chair in "Recicle Giordano." This complexity becomes even more interesting, accessible, and aesthetically inviting due to the variety of materials used. We could speak of a sort of theater of artistic representation set up through a dynamic, layered scenography multiplied by signs, contents, and various materials whose correlation produces not only aesthetic and poetic astonishment but also new meaning. After the reset of fragmentation and dispersion caused by globalization, or, if we prefer, the tabula rasa that critics were already attributing to the 1960s art with the appearance of the voids from which to start the process of reconstructing the image's value, Manera carries out a reload. This happens by zooming in, circumscribing, and regenerating impoverished fragments of the confusing global panorama into an articulate mapping of light and color. Enrico Manera assembles collective desires, creating a visual narrative that, while electing established icons of globalized communication as its subject, asserts itself as an antagonist force to homogenization. Those who lack a sense of irony will struggle to fully comprehend the Manera's artistic universe. It is here that his lighthearted approach becomes significant, revealing the master's pulse, which proves to be both strong and subtle, penetrating. However, sometimes, as in "Assente," the smile fades into a feeling of bitter helplessness. The white horse from the Vidal commercial, an icon of the 1970s Carosello, takes center stage, with its luminous gallop, mane blowing in the wind, infusing a strong charge of vitality. But instead of an imaginary knight, the vertical neon sign "assente" (absent) stands out, alluding to the current inability to master the exuberant beauty of life. However, the ironic assemblage, remains the happy mechanism that governs a significant part of Manera's artistic production, lifting it from rhetorical citations. In the iconographic investiture, irony confers lightness and opens vertically perceptual paths that recover historical depth, connecting horizontally and analogically to the present, with a concrete narrative potential. The observer's eye is guided by a familiar yet unpredictable aesthetic dimension. The use of photographic material and film frames acts as a mediator and binder, representing an expected and effective medium adopted from the common imagination. A new mental perspective, whose depth is sanctioned by the internet, emerges. Contemporary artistic language, with matter and spatial dimensions already freed by informal and conceptual movements, seems to favor other dimensions of spontaneity, cognitive immediacy, and improvisation. Thus, artistic gesturality itself is strongly influenced by media and materials that allude to expressive speed and visual supports determined by new technologies. - Francesca Barbi Marinetti-
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