LAURINA PAPERINA, DANIEL JOHNSTON, TOMMASO BULDINI
I giovani non hanno più…

Martina Corbetta_Via Milano, 98. Giussano (MB)
3.07.2021 – 30.09.2021

The title of the exhibition, “I giovani non hanno più …”, open to various interpretations, alludes to the indignation with which generations criticize one another, staging the difficult dialogue between different cultural universes. The idea of this exhibition comes from afar, from a meeting in Miami… indeed not from Sacramento, where Daniel Johnston was born, or rather from Milan where Tommaso and Laurina met… but perhaps they met on Instagram. If it’s hard to say where, maybe we can try when. In the early 90s, when Johnston’s figurative style began to spread, cleared by the Kurt Cobain shirt. No, in the early 2000s, when Laurina begins to develop that style of cultural fusion that makes her work unique; or again in late 2018 when Tommaso and Laurina discover a myth in common in Johnston. But also when Martina Corbetta begins to work intensely with Laurina or when RIZOMIarte, who had already worked with Johnston in 2012, sees Johnston’s silhouette peeking out of a Laurina painting.

The important point here is the fusion of three works and three modes of expression that work perfectly together, because the root is for all the confrontation with those “mythological” figures that settle in the conscience, then becoming the medium of a personal discourse. This discourse subsequently assumes different meanings: for Johnston almost religious, for Buldini psychoanalysis, for Laurina of stylistic language. It is clear that Johnston’s cultural references are typical of a previous generation compared to those of Buldini and Laurina, but in becoming Johnston for them precisely one of these references, we discover the sedimentation process that is at the origin of the construction of cultural universes. The exhibition includes thirty works, ten for each artist. Daniel Johnston’s works are almost all in A4 format, with the exception of a larger work. The paintings by Tommaso Buldini and Laurina Paperina arise from the comparison with the research of the American master and have never been exhibited before. Buldini worked, in particular, on the oval format with acrylic colors; Laurina on the small size.

Laurina Paperina
Smile the end is near, 2021
Mixed on canvas. 25×30 cm