Let’s make it short, because in the incipit you have already the end: I painted (and I will continue to do so) for three years in the streets of Quartieri Spagnoli (Spanish Quarters, a popular neighborhood of Napoli). Attacking from every border: Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Pignasecca, Chiaia; getting stuck in the thick maze of the chessboard made some time ago for the Spanish ranks, the unexplored and dreaded heart because of its armor made of clichés. I did it during the day, starting from those buildings (destroyed by the earthquake and never restored) that are considered a no man’s land; and when a pedestrian, after seeing me to operate (painting is surgery, I already told you), came forward and asked me to paint also the door of his “basso” (a sort of apartment on the street level present in various popular neighborhoods of Napoli, usually inhabited by poor people, immigrants and students), he unconsciously put in motion a chain reaction that catapulted me as a flipper ball from a wall to another wall, from basso to basso, garage after garage, to satisfy all those requests of the ones (many, too many for me alone) who asked me a painting.
Some time ago, a friend of mine asked me: but why do you do it? I realized she had more answers than me. She thought that maybe I did it to improve the neighborhood, or because I liked to stay with people. Maybe, and if it’s true I don’t care; but I am more inclined to believe that I did it because I had to, I was supporting my obsession. I am drawn by the characters I paint, not vice versa. Armed to the teeth, self-destructive, odd, more modern than any modern one, they drag me and force me to give life to them putting them in that reasonable setting called metropolis. You can’t do anything against it, when a passion is so strong you walk in the fire without thinking, even though you know you can burn down at every moment, as some surfaces (but just by name, because if you look better they have really deep stories to tell you) hidden by some billboards that once wrecked unveil layers and layers of advertising posters that have given birth to very disturbing beings.
Everything that is in the middle, between me and every single page written between the lines and the folds of this magnificent neighborhood, is a private story and doesn’t deserve too much trafficking. Maybe love puts itself on display? Just the ones who show off participation, requalification and social intervention build their careers showcasing themselves as some old prostitutes. Here there is nothing to show and still a lot of things to do. Meanwhile I nonstop painted some anxieties of mine (that belong to many others too, I believe) that were often disturbing also for other people; I can’t help saying that many people consider my works to be very frightening and so they ask me to draw more cheerful things, some floral and prettier things (it’s the dictatorship of pretty!). I don’t go along with their wishes. Because even if their emotional participation is very precious for me, also my autonomy is precious. If I started to comfort them, then I would risk to be associated with the many ones who continuously try to hide the disaster under the carpet. Therefore I persist to paint my obsessions, that anyway are fostered by the neighboring humus, and possibly even increased by it. (c&k)
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