MAG - Marsiglione Arts Gallery presents The Leader is Present by Max Papeschi

MAG - Marsiglione Arts Gallery presents, from Friday May 27th to Sunday June 26th, the exhibition The Leader is Present, solo show of the Italian artist #maxpapeschi.

The exhibit is part of the main project Welcome to North Korea, realized with the participation of Amnesty International Italy. #maxpapeschi has been assigned the role as Cultural Ambassador of North Korea and of its dictator Kim Jong-Un. The purpose is to attract and ,possibly, become medias and public opinion aware of North Korean regime’s crimes.

The exhibition shows a corpus of unreleased artworks by #maxpapeschi (Milan 1970), focused on Kim Jong Un’s figure and made by some of the main art protagonists.

The artist re-elaborates in a parodic version some of the most famous works of #contemporaryart - from Warhol to Hirst, passing by Banksy, Maurizio Cattelan, Lucio Fontana and Marina Abramovic - in which the North Korean leader is at the center of the scene, as if all the artists, even those no longer alive, unison decided to honor him by their own art on occasion of the exhibit curated by #maxpapeschi.

With an expressive, immediate and irreverent style, #maxpapeschi debunks the cult of the personality taking it to extreme effects: Kim Jong Un who comes out through Fontana’s cuts, or the haughty one who refuses to glance back at Marina Abramovic, far way from inspiring devotion, he is grotesque and even ridiculous.

Regime propaganda, which the “Great Leader”’s deification is only a part of, is parodied through contemporary art’s language, and it reveals all its absurdity and it confronts with the atrocity of the news from North Korea, giving birth to a semiotic short circuit.

On the same day of The Leader is Present’s opening also a special Store of the false brand “Made in North Korea”, will be inaugurated. It will be placed always at the MAG, Marsiglione Arts Gallery, and here you will be able to buy dedicated gadgets such as t-shirts and little stuffed toys, produced thanks to the co-operation with the company Kahuna Project. Part of the proceed from the sales will be allocated to Amnesty International Italy.
The exhibition will show also some board games revisited by the artist in a dictatorial version, for example “ Guess Who?” becomes “Guess Kim?” where there is only one character to be recognized and guessed right: Kim. Moreover art videos, projections of animated movies, including the North Korean version of South Park and Teletubbies, where all the characters with Kim Jong Un’s face acclaim the regime or sing the National anthem through the obsolete sincro-vox technique. Classic video games of the 80s ,that visitors can really play, here presented in a special edition where Kim always wins and the adversary is never successful.
Welcome to North Korea has been fulfilled with the participation of the NGO for Human Rights Amnesty International Italy. It is a composite project of public art which using more medias gathers mobile installations, performances, video, sculpture, photography and painting. The project was presented for the first time on April 22nd 2016 in Milan at Piazza Piemonte, from May 27th to June 26th will be at the MAG and later it will have its own artistic tour reaching more cities in Italy an abroad.
Each set up will have new additions in order to involve people in a unique experience.

With Welcome to North Korea #maxpapeschi tells the horrors of a contemporary dictatorship by the figurative oxymoron. The detention camps become recreation grounds and the spectator is projected into a parallel dimension, where Pyongyang regime’s monstrosity is disguised by the grotesque regime’s propaganda. The project is associated to its own website, www.welcometonorthkorea.org, where among other things, video games’ lovers can challenge the North Korean Leader to Kim pong. Welcome to North Korea is also on the main socials such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter where videos and previews are posted.
The Leader is Present is an art show with no gag, which helps to inform and reflect through a skillful use of the playful dimension. The exhibit is complete of catalog available on request.

MAG - Marsiglione Arts Gallery

presents

The Leader is Present

By Max Papeschi

With the participation of Amnesty International Italy.

May 27th – June 26th 2016
Opening: Friday May 27th at 6.30pm

Vernissage of The Leader is Present and opening of the Store Made in North Korea Friday May 27th at 6.30pm

MAG - Marsiglione Arts Gallery
Via Vitani, 31
22100 Como
www.marsiglioneartsgallery.com

Opening hours
From Tuesday to Saturday 10:00am - 1.00pm / 3.00pm - 7.00pm
Special openings on request
Tel. +39 328 7521463
info@marsiglioneartsgallery.com