Galleria Patricia Armocida of Milan is proud to present "The Disco Of Italo", the first solo exhibition in Italy by Piet Parra.
Originally from southern Holland, he is considered a "cult" artist by graphic designers and communication specialists. Parra is an artist with a myriad of talents: illustrator, graphic designer, creator of Rockwell Clothing, DJ, and musician in Le Le and Parra Soundsystem.
For this exhibit, the artist presented canvases, original drawings, new prints, posters, and a site-specific installation.
Parra is known to lovers of his illustrations for the themes and motifs which have become unmistakable and distinctive trademarks of his style: flat, highly saturated colors, vibrant typographic hand-drawn letters, and worlds inhabited by hybrid, bizarre, surreal characters. Men with bird heads, fleshy and voluptuous women with round sensual bodies, mixed with texts and themes that span from sarcastic and introspective, to ironic and bold, all the way to nonsensical.
The title of this exhibit, "The Disco of Italo", is an amusing homage to the phenomenon of "Italo Disco", a term coined in 1983 by a German named Bernhard Mikulski, which later became famous worldwide as the synonym for dance music made in Italy.
Piet Janssen "Parra" (born in 1976) lives and works in Amsterdam.
Son of an artist, once part of the skate scene, he began his career as a self-taught artist by drawing graphics for streetwear and creating album covers for underground groups and posters/flyers for clubs. His silk screen posters of silhouettes with thick outlines, flat colors, and amusing texts, have rendered his style easily recognizable. Esteemed and popular in the independent scene in the beginning, he then quickly became one of the most recognized, creative, and eclectic illustrators worldwide. Important clothing brands have recruited Parra to customize limited edition products, his hands have illustrated important ad campaigns, his works have been shown in various solo exhibitions in Europe and in the USA.
Some of his more recent exhibits: "Is That a Gun My Friend?" HVW8 Gallery, Los Angeles, 2009; "Boo to the Hoo" Lazy Dog Gallery, Paris, 2009; "Random Tits" Reed Space, New York, 2008; "Parrived" Arrive, Miami, 2007; "LaLaLa" HVW8 Gallery, Los Angeles, 2007; "Tips And Typo" Kemistry Gallery, London, 2005.
