Marco Vernaschi
From the series Placebo
Placebo, his current body of work in progress, is no exception to this direct experience of creativity. Vernaschi now turns the camera on himself, documenting his life, expressing the upheaval, solitude, silence and humanness he is currently experiencing. Capturing the most physical moments of sexual expression, he follows an exploration of the aftermath, observing his path through a collection of ephemeral experiences. He exerts no effort to make sense of, analyze, or explain this process, but merely to express. His images are literally a pure examination of his humanity, a ‘research’ of his present existence.
Placebo constantly assaults the viewer in its overwhelming power and affirmation of pure physicality. The images are sometimes cast in an aura of violence, but violence revealed as a basic component of human nature, of nature itself, the essence of civilization’s foundation. A violence that holds within it a mixture of fear and pleasure, mirroring the artist’s own sense of existentialism. Vernaschi’s creative process is a cocktail of immediacy, instinct and frenzy. The images which make up Placebo, range from moments of calm contemplation, delving deeply into the ferocity of fucking, traveling to a moment of uncontrollable orgasm when time and consciousness evaporate and experience becomes exclusively sensate.
