Infused with ecstasy and a dark beauty, Marco Mazzoni’s art underlines the connection between the natural world and our own. First featured on the cover of Hi-Fructose Vol. 20, and our blog, the Milan, Italy based artist uses nature as symbolism for his own observations about life, where ghostly figures often emerge in the final stage of drawing. Their eyes are never shown, as Mazzoni sees his work more like a composition of still life of small animals, flowers and leaves, rather than a portrait, rendered only using colored pencil.
Marco Mazzoni often works with the female figure and narratives from ancient Italian folktales, but in recent months, his interest has turned towards darker themes. His upcoming solo show, “Monism”, debuting on May 13th at Galleri Benoni in Denmark, will be one of his darkest shows to date. “It’s darkness is underlined both in the lack of an escape route showed within the moleskine drawings, in which I represent society as a “sect”, and also in all the feminine figures who literally come out of a deep dark background,” Mazzoni shares with Hi-Fructose.
“In all of my shows, I analyze society in a critical way, though always leaving a sparkle of hope, that I identify in the individual instinct of survival as catharsis. In this show specifically, that catharsis is not possible anymore, as the evolution of society destroys the survival instinct.” Mazzoni divides the show into two series: the first, ponders the negative aspects of “collectivity”, the quality or state of being a collective human body where “evolution does not exist.” The second part represents “feminine change”, especially through his triptych “Spasm/Menarca/Virtue”, in which the growth of a woman is used as a metaphor for social observation.
Mazzoni explains: “The show describes a social evolution that follows the one underlined by the famous quote from “Gattopardo”: “Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com’è, bisogna che tutto cambi (If we want everything to remain as it is, everything has to change)”. Instead, in this moment, to describe the nowadays situation and paraphrasing the previous quote, a more suitable sentence would be “If we want everything to remain as it is, everything must stay the same”, in a critical way. All of the moleskines focus on this concept, which is also underlined in the titles, repeating the words “as a”: action-reaction.”
Rendered in colored pencil and graphite, the new works of David Jien expand his wild worlds in a show at Richard Heller Gallery. "All Is Not Lost," running through Nov. 2 at the Santa Monica space, moves between his strange scenes and shelves of curiosities. Jien was last featured on our site 
Quebec native