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Claudio Parentela lives and works in Catanzaro, Italy, where he is an illustrator, painter, photographer, mail artist, cartoonist, collagist, and freelance journalist.
Claudio Parentela, Untitled 5, 2004. Ink and pen on paper, 21 x 30 centimeters. Courtesy of the artist.I’m interested in strong contrasts–generally everywhere–in particular, in art. I really like to mix everything myself…in my mind, in my art. I’ve been interested in alchemy, occultism, and esotericism since I was young. I really like using sexual imagery, especially freakish dark sexual imagery in my artworks, because I like to play with all I see, feel, and hear around me. I want to enjoy myself when I create my artworks. I want to celebrate when I draw, when I cut, when I glue. I always want to make myself laugh, everywhere…I want to make myself laugh, and I want to laugh at my art.
My art is a way to explore and to go deeply within myself, to go deeply into the colors I use. These colors are the colors of my soul. Sex is a perfect way to see more and to know more about yourself, a way to better yourself. Sex is the first and holy art. It’s a game, a holy game. It’s art because it’s the universe with all its colors and its contrasts. It’s thought, feeling, matter.
Even so, I also like to play with my other art forms and everything I encounter–underground comics, contemporary art, music, harsh noises, outsider art, my life, and all the people and the adventures I have every day–my anguish…my nightmares…my madness…
I am trying to explore all the rivers of my soul, to transform them through black India ink (which I adore!) and its thousands of tones, which perfectly express the thousands of tones of the soul, of sex with all its contrasts–its knots, its paranoia. Sometimes the freakish, weird, hallucinatory, and chaotic way I draw emphasizes all these movements and feelings in a stronger way. The white sheet of the paper is my mind, my mind without thoughts. The lines, the strong brushstrokes of black ink, are my thoughts and my feelings.
Yes there is a lot of sex and eroticism in my art. I think it’s the perfect way to express my darkness, my irony, my underground sensibilities, and freakish way of existing in this mad and terrible–yet nonetheless wonderful–world. In my work, I am trying to express the funny dance of my everyday life. I put not only Shiva and Shakti in my work, but also Mickey Mouse and small green, yellow, and pink aliens. I have an eternal and desperate love of Mickey Mouse and Shakti, their troubles, their appetites, their quarrels, their mystic and carnal love, and their eternal dance/fight.
I do not have a simple soul and mind. I have varied and multiple souls in my soul, many minds in my mind. My artworks are dark and dreamy, chaotic and anarchistic, strong and disturbing, weird and cruel. Without knowing what I’ll create, I draw to be in the mystery, and to live the mystery.
