Marcus Soddano: A dog without a bone

CURATORIAL TEXT

A dog without a bone is Marcus Soddano's (1997) first solo exhibition at an art gallery.

Soddano is a painter with large gestures who has an eye for details. He works in various techniques, but in this exhibition exclusively painting is shown. His idiom is figurative, where the expression draws inspiration from a traditional East Asian image universe and contemporary popular culture. The motifs revolve around the old myths and the urban myths of our day. He is closely associated with the Bergen hip-hop scene, and traces of this can be seen in his art.

Soddano builds up his paintings gradually, through several layers, both technically and in terms of motifs. In the meeting between different techniques and motifs, between thin airbrush and pasty layers of paint, between the meticulous and the expressive, between the traditional and the contemporary, the paintings sometimes appear as collages, sometimes as memories, sometimes as a poster wall in a big city.

Although his art draws inspiration from art history and other artists, it is primarily the directness and proximity to our own contemporary times that make them relevant and special. The clash between the playful and the intellectual manifests an edge with references to fashion, music, urban street culture and history. 

The title A dog without a bone is taken from the song Riders on the storm by The Doors. Soddano's interpretation of the text is that we are all born into this world without goals and without meaning, but that one develops a meaning for life based on environment, upbringing, friends, family and resources. Which in turn raises the following question: born that way or become that way?

His paintings possess a vitality and energy that is liberating to experience. Paradoxical, perhaps, given that the exhibition was created with a background of self-examination, identity crisis and wonder at one's own self-creation, from an adopted child from Korea to an artist in Norway.

Soddano has studied graphic design at Fagskolen Kristiana and art at Bergen Art School (KIB). Although early in his career, Sodanno has had both solo and group exhibitions.