Stefano Perrone - Stunning Free Images to Use Anywhere

We’ve all been there, whether recently or in the earlier years of the internet age: we’ve typed a simple sequence of words: “red heart”, “green dress”, “yellow flower” in the hope of finding an image to match our search. And yet this relatable, probably daily act for some, maintains the infallible power to catapult us, indiscriminately, into the unforgiving, paradoxically irrelevant, frustratingly unaesthetic: image search result page. Noticing these largely overlooked, ubiquitous experiences related to image consumption is at the heart of Stefano Perrone’s practice. Both extremely sensitive and deeply resistant to image (over)production, Perrone invites us to take a step back, to reconsider the relentlessness of our digital age. Stunning Free Images to Use Anywhere premiers a new series of paintings, a site-specific floor installation, as well as the artist’s first sculptures, that address the beauty and tragedy of the internet’s plethoric offer. With cunning, almost exhilarating irony, the artist pinpoints the absurdity of it all. There is a head-spinning number of images out there: are they real? What are they for? Will they ever be used? By whom? What is the point of creating more?
 Clouds in blue skies, yellow daffodils in no other setting but abstract monochromatic backgrounds, his subjects are as archetypical as they are intriguingly senseless out of context. Yet by choosing precisely these, and reproducing them true to their “digital” form, Perrone celebrates their slick simplicity and confronts their absurdity. The realism with which he paints is simultaneously evocative of Flemish still life realism, as well as a stark reminder of their low-res artificiality. The subjects of the exhibition’s paintings, despite being glaringly anonymous, suddenly acquire cult-status: they are stunning, just not in the way the internet intended them to be.
 Perrone goes one step further in his research by addressing the very “language” of the internet and repurposing it to his own ends. Namely, the intrusive watermark logos used as “veils” to protect images from unauthorized use are all there, in the foreground of his paintings, but he has transformed them into his own signature. Stunning Free Images to Use Anywhere depicts the internet as it truly is, and in doing so, reveals the almost naive simplicity, perhaps even harmlessness of its re- lentless attempt to cater to our every need by manipulating the images meant to manipulate us.
 Taking us even deeper into the heart of our digital-era surrealism is the site specific installation of the artist’s personalized watermark on the floor of the gallery. Perrone also presents his first sculptural works: the haunting skeleton of the watermark is a 3-D four panel plexiglass grid surrounding a patch of grass — alluding perhaps to the Windows iconic screensaver. Downstairs the grid is suspended, redefining the gallery space and partially obstructing our vision. These elements subvert the space: are we inside the image or are these watermarks a signal of Perrone’s possession of everything that we see beyond them?
 By extracting images and signs from the two-dimensionality of the screen, transforming them into physical, three-dimensional objects, the artist takes us full-circle: he reverses image digitalisation, subliming them into material artworks for our “real world”.