Tvboy, the artistic name of Salvatore Benintende, is no longer as interested in satire and irony in his works as when he started. In recent years, he has focused more on documenting and on the social message. He sees the renown and popularity that he has acquired to speak about cross-cutting, relevant issues that affect society as an opportunity.
The Disseny Hub of Barcelona dedicates an exhibition to him, which can be visited until September 11 and which brings together a total of 70 works under the title Tvboy. The invasion. The invasion to which the title alludes has its explanation in urban art itself, which is still an invasion of space. Paintings on canvas, installations and street art photos occupy different areas of the exterior and interior of the venue, interacting with the environment and architecture.
The visit is planned as a thematic journey through the works of this international reference in the genre, which deal with universal themes such as love, power, the heroes of our time and the history of art.
In the words of the show’s curator, Nicolas Ballario, “Tvboy perfectly embodies our times, because it eliminates the boundaries between disciplines, leading us to abandon a categorized and sterile vision of the world.”
“What is a kiss?”, he asks himself in one of these spaces, in which through kisses between iconic figures of pop culture – like the one he painted between Messi and Cristiano, which popularized the artist in Barcelona – he talks about love as the way to overcome rivalries. “A kiss can be a symbol of reconciliation, a gesture that establishes a dialogue between opposing concepts, at a time in history when dialogue seems impracticable”, he explains.
The Italian artist dedicates a part of the collection to the distortion and adaptation of the great classics of art from a current perspective, breaking the sacredness of the great works and merging with a new society in which immediacy reigns, in which according to the author –and as depicted in one of the works– it would most likely be that Jesus took the apostles to McDonald’s for his last dinner.
One year after the start of the war in Ukraine, he was invited by the NGO Cesvi to make a trip to the country, where he was able to portray through 15 murals, with a story in each one, the silent resistance of a people trying to keep their lives alive. everyday.
Also in this line of a more humanitarian art, he collaborated with Open Arms creating a mural inside the ship; “They told me: ‘Your mural will be the first thing those who have been about to die will see,’ so I wanted it to instill hope and joy.” Both projects changed the way of seeing the author’s art.
The favorite part of Tvboy is the collection of reproductions of murals that he has been creating all over the world through which I have passed. One of them is the figure of Santa Rosalía, patron saint of Palermo, his hometown. It is a representation, on a mural, of the religious icon, but with the face of the singer Rosalía. “Everyone venerates her, Motomami is not so well known there and they don’t know who the singer is either, they believe that she is an image of the saint.”
