What
happens when an artificial paradise is abandoned? When the
architecture of the economic boom all of a sudden are left to
neglect, decay, poverty?
The
bleakness fades the colors, the bright lights become sad, opaque
reflections, the once busy streets have no hope and lead to nothing.
This is the same space that years, maybe decades ago gave birth to
projects and dreams, where deals and contacts where sealed, where
existences were in full bloom. These are houses and villages, squares
and monuments, lights and gardens, cars, buses, bicycles.
Those
places have been slowly vacated, maybe for a sudden crisis, maybe
because it was less a paradise than it appeared in the beginning and
all of a sudden life leaves space to the desert, to the void, to a
silent distressing sickness. Houses and streets are left empty but
someone left behind a picture, a note with a telephone number, a book
or a kitchen tool: small things that advise the fact that not a long
time ago there was life in here.
Graffiti
appear on the walls to leave a mark of the people who came after to
lurk into other people's lives, small communities survive in the
middle of nothing, all the rest is empty.
Bleak
pop portraits a world of abandonment, traces of architecture left in
far and sun dried places: landscapes framed between Illinois,
California, New Mexico and Arizona from the artist and photographer
that works under the moniker of A mad tea party during never ending
bus and backpack rides along different corners of north America.
The
Bleakness of the abandoned places is powered by the gloomy lure of
memories and becomes the main character of a study in between
artistic interest and anthropology. It becomes the mirror of a
generation that leaves behind without many regrets all that is not
needed right here, right now. The project of A mad tea party is
graced by the collaboration with Geep 374, young street artist from
Cagliari that reworks some of the photos with a mixed media of
stencils and acrylic. The landscapes gain a new dimension with
objects and details that bring the photos into a dimension that is
even more dreamlike and surreal. The american dream, dusty and
silent.
Francesca Mulas (journalist)
Bleak Pop is brought to you by :
www.amadteapartyphoto.com
iacokitchen.blogspot.com/
geep374.tumblr.com/