The work rember Massimo Marino one man show, publisher, television host, icon of local Roman television in the 1990s and 2000s, creator of VIVIROMA, magazine and television program that has become a cult, transversal and popular event that has cleared the thousand facets of the submerged world of Capitoline underground. For Miria Maiorani, director of VIVIROMA, “Massimo managed to reach the heart of Rome as a lifelong friend. He pierced the screen without artifice, he was simply himself. He coined idioms that entered the imagination. His slogans are more alive than ever today especially among young people ”.
Massimo Marino was a visionary, a decade ahead of the world around him. A kind Charon, a sincere Virgil who every night ferried us to a parallel dimension made up of neon clubs, grotesque characters, undressed odalisques that were everything to the imagination of a teenager. Precisely because it is not our habit to make portraits, we decided to escape from a classic and hyper-realistic representation of the character, instead coloring him alive and lively like the neon lights of those nightclubs that were his life. We wanted to remember Massimo with the fluorescent colors he lit up in our homes when the internet was just a dream.
It is a great honor to have been called to remember him. Partly for artistic research, partly for ideology, we do not accept commissions to pay homage to disappeared characters that we rarely feel close to us. With Massimo it is different. It is our youth, a mix of strong emotions: laughter, discovery of the mystery and excitement of the forbidden. We were attracted to him, we still talked and talked like him, hypnotized by the places he revealed to us, still unreachable for us. Back then we wouldn't have been able to explain it, today we can say that in the pre-Internet era, Massimo was able to bring the new into all homes, with a naturalness that is the super power of the Romans. It made the underworld visible. He was showing a kid that beyond the life he saw on his way to and from school there was the underground, making it attractive.