Prof. Bad Trip

Prof. Bad Trip – A Saucerful of colours – Lesson #3

Opening: Friday, April 21st at 17:00

When: from Friday, April 21st to Monday, May 1st, 2017

Where: GABA, Piazza Vittorio Veneto 7, Macerata, 62100

Time schedule Ratatà Festival: Friday, April 21st 17:00- 20:00; Saturday, April 22nd- Sunday, April 23rd All- day- opening 11:00- 20:00;

Time schedule-following opening: From Monday, April 24th to Monday, May 1st  11:00- 13:00. 15:00 20:00

The Tabularasa Teké Gallery in Carrera takes pleasure in presenting to the public of Ratatà Festival “A saucerful of colours”, the largest retrospective exhibition dedicated to Gianluca Lerici, A.K.A. Prof Bad Trip, the artist from La Spezia, who passed away in 2006. Following the huge success of the first exhibition in Carrara, where it was held this summer at the Teké Gallery, and of the second exhibition in Rome, this retrospective lands in Macerata at the Galleria dell’Accademia di Belle Arti (GABA), with over 30 paintings, little known to the public, and a series of graphic arts, sculptures and other items such as stamps, posters and collages.

The display aims at summarising Prof. Bad Trip’s work from the 80s to the 2000s and his view of the punk and underground counterculture from the 70s up to now. He does this in any art form, from painting to artefacts, books, comics, and even music. His is a savage, disenchanted and ironical critique of a tentacular and asphyxiating society, which smothers any attempt on an intellectual resistance. This creates a terrific battle on canvas, fought with contrasting, sharp colours, perfect to look at with a pair of anaglyph glasses that make it impossible to avoid the delirious details and textures of every work. Professor Bad Trip’s paintings are like a scream full of emotions against a dying world, they are like a stream of consciousness that sends his visionary thoughts straight to the eyes of the public. In every single work, he shares with the public so many emotions that it would be impossible to describe with words.

It is not a case the etymology of the word “visionary” is positive since a Visionary is him who, thanks to his intellect and his “vision”, can manage to find brilliant solutions that change and improve the life of the whole community. It is a premonitory vision, a sort of omen for the future generations or a forward-looking desire – like when in “Apocalyptic Interview”, included in the wonderful catalogue of the exhibition and still topical even after many years, Bad Trip states: “I hope that, with the arrival of Mp3s, CDs will become old and be forgotten”.

At the exhibition, there will be a catalogue in colour containing anaglyph glasses to view the paintings and silk-screen prints in limited and numbered edition. In addition to the photographs of his works, there will be an impressive critical text by Matteo Guarnaccia and, in the appendix, the unpublished full version of the “Apocalyptic Interview” carried out by Vittore Baroni with Prof. Bad Trip.

Moreover, there will be available two silk-screen prints in colours, in limited and numbered edition, produced by Teké Gallery and inspired by two famous canvases from Prof. Bad Trip.