BARRY MCGEE - DUMBO. ACTS OF VANDALISM AND STORIES OF LOVE

I dare anyone who has been to Italy, and especially in Milan, in the past ten years to claim that they have never seen the word "dumbo" written on the city walls. It’s impossible.

The writer hiding behind these five obsessively repeated letters – who has been so much talked about in Milan and Italy – comes out into the open. And with him the whole universe of street art that has surrounded him for a decade. Acts of Vandalism & Stories of Love is an unprecedented photographic voyage, the actual backstage dynamics of the irrepressible obsession to tattoo the city’s skin. Born in the 70’s, Dumbo grew up in the southern suburbs of Milan and came into contact with the world of graffiti in the early 90’s. In a short time he became one of the foremost writers on the European scene. In his extensive travels in Italy, Europe and the United States he came into contact with new situations that contributed to determining his tastes and personality and led him to give new form to his obsessive passion. Without abandoning street action he took a new artistic direction which resulted in participation, between 2001 and 2004, in various collective shows. In 2004 he presented his first solo exhibition in Milan, an event which aroused increasing media interest in this disturbing, ingenious and above all mysterious character. It wasn’t long before Dumbo became a subject of debate between public order institutions and contemporary art circuits.

Dumbo represents everything that is right by doing everything that is considered wrong by a cultural system which goes on refusing to accept reality as it is and persisting in creating false and artificial ones. Barry McGee