Beguiling Italy is famous for ancient landmarks and classical artworks of the Renaissance period. However, new reasons to explore these historic cities include encountering the vast amount of street-art that’s sprucing-up archaic neighborhoods. Recently, the a.DNA Collective, an organization based in the Province of Salerno, invited the Venetian artist Manuel Di Rita, a.k.a. “Peeta” to Agropoli, to participate in the Urban Area Project and paint the facade of the Alfonso Gatto High school.
About the Mural
The mural illustrates Peeta’s ability to reconstruct the architectural composition of the building by stimulating a new and different perception of the landscape and urban context that students, teachers and citizens of Agropoli are used to. The idea proposes a transformation of the pre-existing architecture, decomposed and recomposed through a meticulous study of its structure and environment. It could define the reasoning behind the blue and grey color scheme he choose to echo the peculiarity of Agropoli, a town suspended between land and sea, history and modernity.
Extending over four different facades of the building, within the quaint town of Agropoli, the community-driven project was made possible by the a.DNA Collective, and the Alfonso Gatto High school students, faculty and staff.
The final result is an anamorphic artwork visible from a specific point of observation: the internal threshold of the pedestrian entrance gate which leads to the main square of the Institute.
About the Artist
Peeta, a.k.a Manuel Di Rita is an Italian artist that lives in Venice, Italy. He started as a graffiti artist in 1993, and nearly a decade after is widely acclaimed for his 3D style. He’s a member of the EAD crew in Padova, Italy as well as the FX and RWK crews in New York City. Over the years he’s participated in festivals, group and solo art shows around the world. He even created the first bronze graffiti sculpture, in 2010.
His work explores sculptural lettering and their individual constructed quality which he transcends to spell his moniker, Peeta. He does this by using a variety of shading, gradients and shadows in remarkable depth that give a unique beauty to his creations.
He combines sculpture techniques with the art of light and shadowing that results in delightful imagery that’s seemingly poised just off the surface on which it’s painted.
The artist’s use of 3-dimensional depth also signifies his profound spiritual side. A progressive channel that seeks to discover and disclose his personality, chronicle his ego and the desire to better understand himself. Reiterating his name is approached as a self-portrait. His artwork reveals the deceptiveness of human perception- the fallacy of narrow and fixed point-of-views using 3D pictorials that ultimately reveal their will to deceive.
About a.DNA Collective
The a.DNA Collective started in 2010 as a response to a sterile and more closed-minded art scene. Their initiatives, that include the Urban Area Project aims to enhance and reactivate cultural spaces and aggregation through urban art works, designed site-specific by artists to restore and add vibrancy to neighborhoods.
The goal is to create a contact not only symbolic, but direct between the artist, the space in which he works and those who live it every day or cross it occasionally, expanding the range of action to urban interventions not exclusively artistic, but offering new and restoring old services to the city.
Stimulating respect and care for the places where we live, means growing and allowing the new generations to continue to do so in an increasingly conscious and active way. For this reason a.DNA promotes a free exchange of knowledge that triggers an open circuit in which the idea of the individual can be realized in the community, by passing the walls that often divide, to transform them into vehicles of direct and participated communication.
Peeta: website | facebook | instagram
a.DNA Collective: website | facebook
