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LUPINO
Introduction
Self-taught, Lupino the multimedia artist, is the inspiration behind Lupinizam, which depicts an uncomfortable sensuality in motifs and imagery from popular culture given life through metal, wood and other sinuous materials in paintings and sculpture.
Lupino's works recreate and reinterpret iconographic imagery from popular historical and contemporary culture and folk tradition. He references and subverts themes found in religion, literature, popular culture rituals and rites of passage including Rock ’n’ Roll and Pop Art, as well as extremes of national and individual behaviour.
Early Life: Karate, Bodyguard, Model and Actor
Lupino was born in former Yugoslavia where he grew up in Varaždin, once a capital city and still an important cultural centre. He moved to Rome and then to London in his early twenties to pursue a career in karate as a black belt instructor and bodyguard before arriving in New York. Besides his involvement in martial arts, he soon found himself in demand as a fashion model. It was while he was studying acting at Stellar Adler Studio of Acting, whose graduates include Marlon Brando, Warren Beatty and Robert de Niro, that he met Deborah Turbeville, the renowned fashion photographer credited with transforming "fashion photography into avant-garde art.” She was casting for models and he soon became a regular model, appearing in a number of her campaigns for Italian and American Vogue, representing the Valentino and Versace brands among others.
Photography
Deborah Turberville became a lifelong friend and continues to be an inspiration for all his creative work. It was she who lent Lupino his first camera and this led to his interest and fascination with photography. Before long, he had won his first commission from Annie Flanders, owner and Editor-in-Chief of Details magazine, the most avant-garde magazine in the world at that time. Lupino’s energetic, creative natural exuberance and his talent for drawing out his subjects through direct engagement with his subject matter is evident from the start. The physical intensity and visual grittiness of his photos were to become trademarks of his work and he was published in Vogue, Photo, Zoom, Stern, Max and various European publications such as Eurepeo, Expresso, Stern, Tempo as well as in multiple art magazines of the time.
Lupino was intrigued by the personalities of the demi-monde of the New York nightlife scene and set up a mobile studio in two of New York’s hippest nightclubs of the time, first in ‘Area’ and later in ‘The World’. It was in these clubs that he had access to an endless stream of night clubbers and minor and major celebrities who queued up in the clubs to have their portraits taken. Visitors included The Ramones, Malcolm McLaren, Billy Idol, Joe Strummer, Frank Zappa, Grace Jones, Brian Ferry, Rupert Everett, Marc Jacobs, Jean Paul Gaultier, Malcolm Forbes and artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. A selection of his vintage portraits from this period can be seen on htttp://lupinophotos.com.
Lupino was also in high demand at the Playboy magazine where he shot hundreds of models over a period of several years. His approach to nude photography raised the bar for taste and he is responsible for artistic shoots which bring out both the human warmth and sexual energy in the models.
With a strong commitment to representing and supporting humanitarian work, Lupino has also worked on a number of highly-regarded collections which capture the humanity and intimacy of his subjects such as the Down’s Syndrome Collection. He also worked on a project called My Angels, which is dedicated to remind us that we should not turn away or hide from suffering, no matter how difficult the topic. He captures the tragic innocence and beauty, the hope and despair of terminally-ill children in a cancer ward.
No matter the subject, in his photography, Lupino strives to bring out the light and dark moods, the hopes and fears, and the beauty and ugliness of his subjects, to challenge those who look at his work to think again about perceived notions of morality and prejudice.
Sculptures and Paintings
The majority of Lupino’s photographic work happened during the eighties when he became a native New Yorker and took up American citizenship. However, when war broke out in the Balkans, he felt compelled to return to the country of his birth to play his part in supporting his homeland and documenting the atrocities. The subsequent horrors, brutality and randomness of life and death left a deep impression on his artistic sensitivity and he channeled these emotions into new media. He turned to sculpture and painting to express the growing angst within. His approach is unique and has led to the term Lupinizam being used to describe his philosophy.
Lupinizam
Lupinizam is based upon the inner struggle to represent the fragile nature of human existence and the unsettling contemplation of the afterlife, the ebb and flow of war and peace, and the spectrum of human behaviour and sexuality with its concomitant joy, guilt and despair. He is inspired by biblical and literary descriptions of Paradise Lost and the struggle for redemption and references African tribal art and customs as well as western religious symbols.
Human experience, events and subjects are catalogued and represented through artistic, cultural and historical narratives. Lupino’s works tell a story set against both familiar and alien landscapes. Some reference a specific artistic style, a well-known work of art, or a familiar cultural icon. The subject matter poses questions about our existence and asks us to resolve the dilemmas on the canvas or in the sculpted exhibits. These pieces are at first sight familiar but on closer inspection, the inner core of the work reveals a complex symbiosis where elements and emotions are polarised. The juxtaposition of reworked iconography from Christian and tribal sources imparts added value and fresh approach to the contemporary European art scene.
Lupino carefully chooses appropriate materials to support the subject matter and /or frame the canvas. The permutations of materials - usually large, heavy pieces of wood and metal - create a surface tension, and he often turns a combination of wood or metal inside out to expose the womb of the sculpture, to expose the light or darkness of the subject at its core.
Colour is used to give an organic, living flow and dynamism to his work. In his sculptures, the mixture of finely shaped wood and sharp metal parts, each piece is both attractive and disarming. This paradox is created and shaped using industrial machines including metal grinders, polishing machines, and welding machines to create layered textures and develop a sense of depth. He also engages local artisans and experts - specialists in wood and metal and other materials - to source and sculpt the materials to best advantage.
Statues
A series of larger than life sculptures sculpted from wood, metal and bronze evoke the poses and studies from Lupino's modelling photography. These are timeless studies which are the product of a brutal energy and life force, a triumph of brutality and beauty. The fire sculptures capture the latent power of fire through organic movement and flow carved in bronze over-sized studies reaching nearly four and a half metres into the sky.
Chairs
In his Chairs collection, Lupino takes an everyday functional piece of furniture and elevates it to an art form, coupling the oversized proportions and strength of metal with powerful leaders from Julius Caesar to the present with the Putin Chair. The architected larger than life chairs are adorned with elements in wood and metal, and bars and surfaces create unique structures with a stark, foreboding beauty.
Crosses
Lupino works with Christian iconography combining a traditional design of the cross with multiple imaginative variations built in wood in different colours (shades) and strength. He uses ancient black wood from prehistoric times. The body of Christ is reduced to geometric, ornamental fragments of Christ's wounds.
Rich artistic treatment of the vertical and horizontal beams are created with smooth, twisted and sometimes simple, playful chisel marks on the wood surface. The pieces are universally familiar but also suggest an intimate and personal quest for redemption.
Masks
The mask collection is a fine example of Lupino’s reinterpretation of ancient works using ancient wood and brutal materials such as nails to create the tension between a familiar work of art in a modern setting (see above).
Paintings
Lupino’s visionary reinterpretation of Paradise Lost in a series of paintings under this title reflect a visceral dialog, an engagement between artist and subject. The brute force of the application of paint and materials, often layer upon layer makes the subject stand out physically as well as visually.
Lupino also enjoys creating movement in his paintings and his studies of both human and humanlike forms ooze a sensuality. At times, the viewer is unsure which sex or animal is being represented.
The raw beauty of naturalised forms jump out from the canvas in multiple layers which the artist has applied giving the paintings a visceral, lithe dance-like movement.
Another World
Lupino takes a new direction in his 2016 project ‘Another World’ where he creates a family of alien forms, recognisably human and familiar but on close inspection brutally attractive and alarming. The tension between the beauty of this naked humanoid community from another world, their superhuman gazes fixed above and beyond us, is both engrossing and disturbing.
Tables, chairs, mirrors
Lupino also turns his hand to sculpted furniture with highly aesthetic practical items: Chairs, tables, frames for mirrors and pictures. He gives them the stamp of the artist, referencing their primary function as pieces of furniture but elevating them to works of art, which can stand alone as exhibition pieces or stand in a home setting as functional objects of beauty.
There are tables with musically-inspired curved outlines, straight-line silhouettes and high-gloss finishes of noble ancient wood given life through geometric stripes, which are an integral part of the tonal treatment of the surface.
Afterword
The secret is not to view Lupino’s artwork as intellectual, formal, conventional or refined but rather to have a spontaneous empathy towards his work regardless of the technique or medium used. The uninhibited repetition and often devastating energy of love and death reflects an apocalyptic foreboding, a sense of impending disaster but, at the same time, a sense of redemption and hope. It is both a celebration of beauty and pain, and a cry for help, a quest for redemption in this soulless, often dark world set in a dark universe. At first sight whimsical and appealing but on closer inspection, there are brooding themes of darkness and emptiness.