Red Penguin (2005)

Cracking Art
47 x 19 x 18 inches, plastic, edition of 200

"I have sought the origins of life in the earth’s oldest natural material, that is petroleum. A black, dense liquid disgorging from the warm womb of Mother Earth, and the natural repository of the planet’s entire history of organic life-forms, from its origins to the present day. I studied the technique known as 'cracking,' which breaks up this natural magma into a series of synthetic, artificial derivative products. I discovered plastic, the most modern and extraordinary element that any artist can manipulate.

I use objects and shapes in plastic that evoke or simulate nature, so as to reinstate petroleum’s ancient, primary forms of life and imagery. This means turning life back in its tracks, as a way of finding the poetical voice an sould of art in the material itself."

— Omar Ronda

The Italian artists Omar Ronda founded the non-profic artists group, Cracking Art, in 1993 with 6 other artists, Alex Angi, Kicco, Renzo Nucara, Carlo Rizzeti, Marco Veronese and William Sweetlove. They have exhibited widely throughout Europe and first exhibited at 21C Museum in 2005. The Red Penguin sculptures that are exhibited throughout 21C were commissioned for a public art project at the 2005 Venice Biennale.

"The group has chosen to express itself in atypical fashion through irony. After all, is learning not best accomplished when it is fun?" Cracking Art: Nascita di un’avanguardia. Milan: Mazzatta, 2005

Manifesto for the Third Millenium

Biella, Italy, 30 May 1993
The Philosophical Project of Omar Ronda

We want to change the codes for the art of the future.
Art is as important as our own life.
We are men of the present and want our work to interpret contemporary problems.
Art and life do not exist without a wholeness of nature.
Art and culture are the only possibile saviours of the world and humanity.
We have chosen 'Cracking' for our work as it shows the molecular fission between natural and artificial.
Our elected material is 'plastic', containing the whole experience of the planet, natural / artificial, ancient / future, and in which we seek the archaic anthropological, vegetable and animal origins, in order to build a new kind of iconography.
We are enemies of hypocrisy, conspiracy and suspicion.
We fight for the defence of nature and man with all our force.
We want to leave behind a better world than the one we found.