The New York based artist Angelo Musco, originally from Naples in Italy, has evolved his artistic practice into advanced surrealistic photography, playing on the power of aggregation. His motifs are inspired by his difficult birth and childhood, using large numbers of nude models to construct imaginary spaces and places. There are echoes of Salvador Dali’s In Voluptas Mors (Voluptuous Death, 1951), but is focused on birth and growth rather than death. Musco’s work is original and fundamentally different to for example Spencer Tunick’s assemblages of nudes in real landscapes, as Musco creates both the mystic landscapes and its inhabitants from images of nude bodies.
The titles of his works are based on Greek mythology, such as Theom that was shot underwater alluding to amniotic fluid; Cortex, forest-like trees and plants; Aranea, looks like cobwebs or neural networks; Murmek, subterranean ant-like structures; Alveo, human shapes as a beehive; and Lactis, nude models immersed in milk - the white surface of a large amount of milk, seamlessly disappearing in a white background and the milk surface broken by human bodies.
All Musco’s images are large, on the scale of room-size, and in high-dynamic grey-scales or earthen sepias.
Musco went to Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli and finished his degree as an exchange student in Granada in Spain, where the ideas for his current practice started. He has been based in New York in the US since 1997.
July 13, 2014
Pforzheim University
Design Academy Eindhoven
Academy of Design Australia
University of Cincinnati
LOFT 42
Skopje Design Week
