From 16 to 30 September, one of Parma’s main streets, Viale Toschi, will host “Richiami Parma 2021”, a street art installation designed and created by the artist Fabrizio Da Prato. Some twenty outdoor billboard mock-ups usually displaying advertisement posters will now be used to showcase an open-air exhibition, organised with the patronage of the City of Parma and the Parco Nazionale Appennino Tosco – Emiliano.
Richiami Parma 2021, an urban art gallery by Fabrizio Da Prato
Eighteen paintings, measuring 140 X 200 cm each, made from advertisement posters rescued from the scrap pile. The artist created the paintings in his studio in Castelvecchio Pascoli, Tuscany, a few months before the billposting. Then, he sent them to Parma, where the bill posters are to regularly paste them on 16 September 2021, just like any other street poster.
Blended in with the existing advertising material, these artistic pop-ups will replace advertisements and be displayed on billboards along the Viale as a gift to passers-by, who will see them gradually change due to unpredictable variables such as weather, wear and other types of deterioration. At the end of the exhibition period, the works will be “cancelled” by the new advertisement posters.
“Richiami Parma 2020” – A change of perspective
The previous edition of the installation, “Richiami Parma 2020”, took place in September 2020 for only 15 days, as a sort of first part of “Richiami Parma 2021”.
“Richiami Parma 2020” was in fact the result of a physical and mental journey made by Fabrizio Da Prato across the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines and the neighbouring areas of Parma, to discover its small communities with their disappearing traditions and local identities. “Richiami Parma 2021” offers a totally new perspective. It’s not the artist who leaves his home to discover the various communities across the territory, but rather the cities that break into the domestic environments. The artist uses the intertwining of aesthetics and urban fabric as a tool for anthropological and social reflection. Parma has been chosen as the venue for “Richiami 2021” because of its high symbolic value, having been nominated “Italian Capital of Culture” in 2020. The city’s confirmation for 2021 led the artist to imagine an extension of his own art installation.
Fabrizio Da Prato has already worked in other “Italian Capitals of Culture”, including Palermo (2018) and Pistoia (2017), in public and unconventional places, to create amazing and transient pieces of urban art.
