MOBY DICK X MUSEUM OF URBAN ART (ITALY)
May 2014, Turin, Italy
Opiemme, AHAB’s WHALE, Melville’s Moby Dick tribute, Mau, 2014
A new public painting for MAU (Museum of Urban Art), located in Corso Tassoni/Via Cibrario, Torino
A calligram inspired by Melville’s words from his masterpiece “Moby Dick”.
On BROOKLYN STREET ART
OPIEMME X MOBY DICK X MUSEUM OF URBAN ART (ITALY)
Posted on June 3, 2014
There has been some excited talk in the last couple of weeks here about the announcement of a new urban art museum in New Jersey associated with Mana Contemporary – some even saying that it is the first of its kind. No doubt it will be a first in many categories but when we heard the name MANA associated with an urban museum we also thought of MAU. The Museum of Urban Art in Turin Italy is called Museo d’Arte Urbana and it has a director and a board, has programmed and placed countless works in public spaces since the mid 1990s, and is reportedly securing a large permanent location in that city as well. Exactly the same, only different.
“It’s a really particular reality,” says Opiemme this week of the MAU program that just brought him to Torino, as the city is natively referred to. “There’s a block called Campidoglio where MAU took over beginning in 1995,” the Street Artist says about what is essentially a mural arts program that has brought public artists and artworks to the street in a curated fashion. Successfully, you might add, from the citizens point of view.
“Actually I never painted in a place where people were so happy to have me there,” he says of the new 50 square meter text based whale based on Melville’s Moby Dick. Installed over a weekend in May where Corso Tassoni meets Via Cibrario, the text comes from the book, is entitled “Ahab’s Whale”, and according to Opiemme, it questions who is the bigger monster – the whale or the captain’s obsession. […]
