Biography
Gian Mario Conti: painter, musician, performer, architect of Zen gardens, curandero.
He was born April 25, 1966 in Valbondione, a small town in the Orobie Alpine foothills, in the Seriana Valley, where he spent a peaceful childhood in the woods.
At the age of 6 he began to suffer from sleep walking and subsided only when he started to roll out images found within himself and then represented in the semi-professional sheets his mother bought for him.
These were images of warriors and falls: the force of nature would then be the constant theme of his work.
At 8 he already was a mature painter and won a county competition, at 19 his family tried to join him to the life of the valley through a common job, but again there was a force that urged and made him break every chain and every rule, all except one: the need to follow himself.
He thus became a painter renowned in the local art galleries and, over the years, as a musician and poet, following inner self-taught scores: a road that led him to dig deep and inextricably bonds between art and life.
To him, the 80s were years of extensive research, he began to experiment with new techniques, alternative materials. From 1993 he has dedicated to environmental and social degradation, attaining a new materic and informal artistic language. The works of this period evoke the dissolution of nature and things and are works of great emotional impact, gathered under the title "Time of absinthe”, or as shadow opposed to the light, works of bitterness.
In those years, Gian Mario converted a car into a garden, making it completely environmentally friendly, where the lawn takes the place of the panels and he travels on it. This work entitled "Nostalgia for Nature" is presented at the art exhibition of Rignano sull 'Arno. In the same period, as for the deconstruction of the pictorial reality, also his music becomes minimal and the drive to the spiritual quest is constantly increasing. This is reflected by the decisive approach to yoga therapy. The combination of all these languages became clear when he came to Assisi in 2006 and "became" Jesus: he played music and developed as a street artist. He listened to people and lived three years in a tent in the woods giving all up.
These were years of great introspection and silence.
The most recent work of Gian Mario Conti, entitled "The barcode man" tells the man of today, commodified, reduced to a product of rapid consumption.
A male imbued with fears, phobias, fragile in dealing with the women’s world, crushed by a role that he is no longer able to perform, separated in skin and bowels. The artist brings to the surface these hidden aspects with a sharp graphic line, with echoes between dream state and expressionism.
Today, Gian Mario Conti lives and works dwelt in the green hills above Assisi.
...work in progress...
