Close-up of the Artist: Ozmo
Il PreGiudizio Universale

February 2 – 26, 2012
Museo del Novecento, Milan

    For two weeks, during opening hours, Italian artist Ozmo kept drawing on the walls of the museum’s temporary exhibition gallery (45 meters long, 4.5 meters wide, and 7 meters high) using only Uniposka black markers. People passing by the nearby Piazza del Duomo could peek and see him drawing from the museum windows. Trained at the Fine Art School of Florence, Ozmo incorporates references to both art history and pop culture in his murals. At the Museo del Novecento, Ozmo also included in his drawings several masterpieces of the museum’s collection as well as the disaster of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia that had occurred less than a month before.

    Ozmo in front of his painting PreGiudizio Universale, 2012

    In the background, Ozmo’s oversize version of Caravaggio’s Medusa (ca. 1597) and, on the left, Dutch artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting, The Blind Leading the Blind (1568).
    Ozmo
    PreGiudizio Universale, 2012
    Installation view
    Museo del Novecento, Milan

    Ozmo drawing Umberto Boccioni’s iconic sculpture
    Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio (Unique Forms of Continuity in Space) (1913), on view in the Museum’s Collection.
    Ozmo
    PreGiudizio Universale, 2012
    Installation view
    Museo del Novecento, Milan

    Passerby peaking at Ozomo working on his installation PreGiudizio Universale (2012) Museo del Novecento, Milan

    Ozmo drawing on the museum wall (February 2012)
    PreGiudizio Universale, 2012
    Museo del Novecento, Milan

    Ozmo
    PreGiudizio Universale, 2012
    Installation view
    Museo del Novecento, Milan

    Ozmo, who rejects to be described as a graffiti artist, divides his works in outdoor and indoor works such as this one — Sponsors (Saint Sebastien), 2008, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 200 cm — that was included in the exhibition.
    Ozmo
    PreGiudizio Universale, 2012
    Installation view
    Museo del Novecento, Milan

    Visitors were invited to take a sticker with one of Ozmo’s signature stencil drawings (the black outline of a man with a skull face), customize it and stick on a wall, becoming part of the exhibition itself.
    Ozmo
    PreGiudizio Universale, 2012
    Installation view
    Museo del Novecento, Milan