Marco Bolognesi

Born in Bologna (Italy) in 1974, Marco Bolognesi now lives and works in London. He is a multimedia artist with experience encompassing drawing, painting, cinema, photography and video. His influences include religious iconography, science fiction, street art, avant-garde manifestos and pop icons. Bolognesi’s artistic identity is a multi-faceted one. He spent his childhood in an artistic environment and attended DAMS, the school of drama, arts and music in Italy, where he thrived upon a diverse means of expression.

Bolognesi’s artistic identity is a multi-faceted one. After spending his childhood in an artistic environment and attending DAMS, the school of drama, arts and music in Italy, where he thrived upon a diverse means of expression, he chose for his final thesis to analyse works by the artist and filmmaker Peter Greenaway.

In 1994 still in Italy, Bolognesi went on to illustrate a selection of works by the poet Roberto Roversi and the following year he collaborated with the graphic artist Guido Crepax on a comic strip. In 1994 also he shot his first short film, ‘Giustizia e Verità’, on the victims of terrorism, which was subsequently screened at the Venice Biennale. In this experimental documentary, images and music are deeply interwoven, as they are in his second short film on the same theme ‘Il Partito del Silenzio’, which was made in 1996. His overall editing method was so particular and his style so original, that both films were presented in Rome by the Academy Award winning composer Ennio Morricone, and then toured internationally around the Italian Cultural Institutes. Cinema subsequently became Bolognesi’s focus and he soon started working as a director’s assistant for some well known directors, including the controversial Nanni Moretti. Although during this period his fascination with the moving image remained, he decided to explore the potential of still images and the photographic medium.

Bolognesi’s first project as a photographer was working with the theatre playwright and literature Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo. In 2002 he moved to London, where he won the Artist in Residence Award at The Italian Cultural Institute, and undertook his first major photographic project Woodland. Woodland was a cycle of stills in collaboration with fashion designers such as Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Kei Kagami and Dolce&Gabbana. These studio images radically blurred the line between tribal art, fetish, punk culture and fashion, using collage techniques to synthesise natural and artificial elements into an imagined breed of hybrid women. In 2006, Woodland was successfully presented in show at the Trafalgar Hotel in London and culminated in the photographic series ‘Synteborg’ in 2007.

In 2008, Bolognesi made the short film Black Hole around the theme of hybrids and cyborgs. This allowed him to further breathe life into his retro-futuristic creations and realise his fantasy vision of a world in which they exist. Since then, his photographic work has been exhibited internationally. As of Summer 2008, one of his stills is being internationally shown as part of the Collezione Farnesina Experimenta, a touring exhibition.

In addition to this, 2008 has seen the International release of DarkStar, Bolognesi’s second photographic publication. DarkStar includes a selection of his photographic works accompanied by a sci-fi short story and essays from a diverse range of journalists and critics.

In February 2009, Bolognesi exhibited some installation work at the Fondazione Solares in Parma, in the exhibition Genesis. During this exhibition his film Dark Star was also screened and was well received by critics. Also in 2009, Einaudi will present a collaborative, and experimental, art/comics/fiction book by Marco Bolognesi and Carlo Lucarelli, one of the most acclaimed contemporary Italian writers.