Artworks of Mario Loprete

Painting is my first love—a vital, pure passion. Creating a painting, commencing with the fervent exploration of a concept through which I aim to convey a message, forms the foundation of my artistic expression. Sculpture, on the other hand, serves as my artistic infidelity to painting—a voluptuous and sensual lover evoking diverse emotions and striking forbidden chords.

In recent years, I have exclusively devoted myself to crafting concrete sculptures. For these creations, I employ my personal clothing. Through an artistic process involving plaster, resin, and cement, I transform these garments into hangable artworks. My memories, DNA, and experiences become concretized within, turning the observer into a sort of post-modern archaeologist studying my work as if they were urban artifacts.

I like to believe that those who gaze upon my sculptures created between 2020 and 2022 can perceive the anguish, vulnerability, and fear that each of us felt in the face of the global issue that was COVID-19. Beneath a layer of cement lie the clothes with which I endured this calamitous period—garments that, much like the relics preserved after Pompeii’s catastrophic eruption two millennia ago, narrate humanity’s struggle to cope with shattered lives and devastated economies.