As he wanders about, Mario Picardo is in the process of recording and collecting: forms, colors, logos, food wrappings, stickers or posters. Each of them is part of a whole inventory of signs and forms that inspire the numerous drawings found inside his fulfilled notebooks.
Picardo, who has studied semiology, American painting and contemporary pop culture, feels the urge to paint from this great collection. His work is not about reproducing what he has seen and consigned in his notebooks but rather the numerous visual signs that are amongst the contemporary world and which, once contained within the studio space, are transformed and mixed, and collided with energy in his paintings. The round shapes with flashy colors are juxtaposed with wiser pastel or black elements in compositions tensed with neutral backgrounds, as a balance game of ghosts or clowns, full figurative components but emptied of their content in order to synthetise the energy and free them of all gender hieriarchy.
@picardomario
@galeriejeromepauchant
