Curated by Wunderkammern
Critical essay by Achille Bonito Oliva
Invader is an artist working in anonymity. Born in 1969 in Paris, he is one of the most important and original international street artists and has exhibited in many prestigious galleries and museums across the world.
Invader is known above all for his public interventions inspired to the Arcade Game Space Invaders, created in 1978 in Japan. His operations are tied up to creative practices of “interference” through which he traces unique trails in the collective space, shaping new signs in the urban landscape. The naturally public formality of his interventions – suspended between visibility and anonymity and between real and virtual spaces – as well as the choice of icons present in the collective memory and practices of the youngest generations, offers a meaningful and original reading of our cultural patrimony.
With the invasion of Rome occurred over the summer of 2010, the artist has finally added the Italian capital in the list of the more than forty cities he has invaded so far: from Katmandu to Bangkok, from small urban centres to great city metropolises such as New York, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and above all Paris.
The exhibition at Wunderkammern presented various aspect of his work: from the alias replicating the space invaders of Roma to works made with his original RubikCubism technique, by means of the coloured modules of the famous puzzle, re-presenting images extrapolated from the realm of art history or popular culture, along with specific installations and curiosities. The invasion guide of Roma and the brand new 19th printed invasion map were also presented in exclusivity at the opening.
On the occasion of the artist’s presence in the city, Wunderkammern’s exhibition space opened once again to the dialectic comparison between ordinary and extraordinary, by drawing its own poetry closer to Invader’s narrative language. The artist revisits the urban space generating wonder and transforming daily routes into unique journeys.
