Ristorante Italia
animation
(2007) 4:36 min.
A sometimes unexpected, sometimes forboding, chain of events take place inside a dive restaurant. The viewer is eyewitness to the occurance of the restaurant’s normal working and other activities that occur without beginning or end. Only the eventual arrival of evening suggests possibile relief or a truce.

Pass Me By
animation
(2006) 4:36 min.
A small child, with legs of a flea, walks through a dilapidated and abandoned city. The child meets a street vendor from whom he buys a balloon on which is drawn a face identical to that of the child. The child later loses the balloon and, from that moment on, a series of disastrous events occur as the video follows the balloon, the true protagonist of the story. A sensation of impending catastrophe, a nonsensical sequence of events and an apparent happy ending all co-exist.

Restroom
animation
(2005) 3:51 min.
Restroom developed from a drawing in which three fat men form the shape of a pyramid as they attempt to collect rainwater in a glass. I created my first experiment in video animation from this image in which the story creates a surreal and visionary situation. The protagonist of the video opens the door of a bathroom and finds himself on a beach where he meets his two doppelgangers. Together they perform a series of acrobatic games. Returning to reality, he throws the rainwater away, thus negating his previous efforts.

MARCO RAPARELLI

I use a variety of media in my work, including drawing, painting and video animation. I believe, however, that drawing best represents my practice. I began with a character called “Bef”, who I still continue to draw, but the themes and characters have increased in number. Bef is a clumsy, coarse, heavy-set woman who almost seems to incarnate the prototype of an anthropological degradation. She represents a research territory of great interest and stimulation for my work, though I approach this research without any social criticism or satire. Departing from this character and by drawing situations in her daily life, I was able to access a series of micro-worlds which rotate around imaginary characters whose situations are often surreal and grotesque.

Narration is the principle characteristic of my video work. It is never, however, the point of departure but rather the consequence of a deviation of themes that are represented by very precise images or drawings which transmit/evoke sensations. Making these animations is to concretize what the image hides within itself, it is a free and extemporaneous deviation on an image that carries others with it and connects one to the other to create infinite micro-worlds.

-Marco Raparelli