Marco Raparelli (born in Rome, 1975; lives and works in Rome) is one of the few artists in Italy who has used the style typical of comic illustration to create his own personal visual language. In the months September 2010—January 2011 he has been in residence at the American Academy as an Italian Affiliated Fellow in the Arts.
Raparelli—with fourteen other current and former Italian Affiliated Fellows—is featured in the show ACCADEMIA ° STANZE ° PERSONE, co-curated by Luca Massimo Barbero (MACRO) and Lexi Eberspacher (AAR). The exhibition runs at the Academy until Thursday 3 March 2011. Here is a behind-the-scenes look at the installation of Marco Raparelli’s Unfamiliar Idea of Rome (2010). In this piece he infiltrates the rows of portraits of past Academy Fellows arrayed over the institution’s bar with ink on paper caricatures of present members of the AAR community. The work appears courtesy of Galleria Umberto di Marino, Naples. Credit for all photographs below is owed to Davide Franceschini/Altrospazio.
Marco Raparelli has participated in numerous exhibitions at locations in Italy and abroad, including “TV/ART/TV,” Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona, curated by Valentina Valentini; “Mutiny seemed a probability,” Fondazione Giuliani, Rome, curated by Adrienne Drake; “Flow,” Kunstraum Kreuzberg in Bethanien, Berlin, curated by Bjorn Hegardt; “Luoghi per eroi,” Via Nuova arte contemporanea, Florence, curated by Lorenzo Bruni; “Screening,” Haunch of Venison, London; “A,B,C,D,M,N,Z,” Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice, curated by Chiara Agnello; “One of these things is not like the other things,” Galleria unosunove, Rome, curated by Raimundas Malasauskas; “Sarah’s Journey” Section of the 7th Bulgarian Biennal of Contemporary Art in Varna, Bulgaria, curated by Lorenzo Bruni.
His solo shows include “Everything will be wonderfoul someday,” Santa Reparata, Florence, curated by Lorenzo Bruni and “Il Futuro non è più quello di una volta,” Umberto di Marino Contemporary Art, Naples (2009).
Marco Raparelli was published in Fukt, a magazine for contemporary drawing edited by Revolver (Berlin). His book As a drop of water on a k-way is published by Fine Arts Unternehmen Books (Zurich) and The economy of the leisur class (2009) is published by Purple Press (Rome).