The exhibition “SEMBRA VIVO!” will be held from 26 May to 8 October, and it is dedicated to hyperrealist sculpture, in show at Palazzo Bonaparte in Rome, Italy. This is the fourteenth stage of a series of “50 years of hyperrealist sculpture” exhibitions organized by the Institut für Kulturaustausch, in Germany. It has previously been exhibited in Spain, Mexico, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Azerbaijan, Taiwan, Belgium and France.

The hyper-realistic sculptures emulate the shapes, contours and textures of the human body or individual body parts and create a convincing visual illusion of human physicality. Based on a selection of approximately 30 hyper-realistic sculptures by 26 pioneering international artists, the exhibition illustrates the development of the human figure in hyperrealist sculpture over the last 50 years.

Glaser/Kunz and Fabio Viale are among the artists presented, with their works.

Once, returning from a trip to Rome, I contemplated man’s instinct to vandalize works of art, especially the most famous ones… The production and commercial distribution of souvenirs echoes man’s desire to possess these symbols – even if only as banal mass-produced objects. My work series entitled Souvenirs depict the vandalism of famous works… express the desire to possess a fetish, a replica of a work of art, even if only in polystyrene.

Jonathan, a realistic cinematic sculpture: Despite the accident, the passionate collector had no intention of missing the opportunity to attend the Art Basel preview.

Neither the gallery nor the work were present at Basel 2009, so how to access the main fair and perform with Jonathan? Easy, with the VIP cards me, Daniel Glaser and above all Jonathan the collector, showed up at the entrance: check-in was made easier because the people at the gate thought that Jonathan was real!

The doors opened promptly and we began our tour of the fairgrounds, attracting attention and provoking chatter with the audience and pretending to obtain information on potentially interesting works from the galleries. Yes, Jonathan speaks!

The problem arose when we wanted to leave the fair, since Jonathan ran out of battery charge and clearly revealed to everyone that he was just a work of art… and the people at the gate did not allow us to leave, thinking that this the work should remain within the fairgrounds. It’s a long story of how we got through, but in the end we were able to get out and go home.

A beautiful story by the gallery owner Pietro Gagliardi, demonstrating how people were used to the extreme behavior of collectors, who needed to be present at all costs, to show off, trade and inject money into the art system in the first decade of the 21st century.