On his canvases Anro paints the portraits of people who have gone missing without trace. Mostly, they are the expressive transposition of photographs (mug shots type) found on several information resources, attached as evidence to the human drama of the person who disappeared and told in tones that vary from the aseptic factual style of a police report to the overemotional detective-like tale of a newspaper article. When represented on canvas the somatic features of these people’s faces lose their “photographic” accurateness. Anro’s paintbrush blurs the details of the human face to enliven the drama which the mass media relish to write about, often with a degree of cynicism that transcends the borders of human empathy. Against their own will, these people are caught into a disquieting paradox: when someone disappears without trace in the real world, he or she enters the circus-like world of the mass media. Broadcasted all around the world, these faces belong now to news reports which capitalize on the drama in order to get viewers and readers’ attention. However, Anro is not interested in denouncing the vulture-like behavior of the mass media. His paintbrush focuses instead on the human side of the drama; on the condition of being lost to the world. A face can no longer be the exact equivalent of the picture that the press or the police keep showing to generate interest. We found ourselves in the realm of the state of mind in which a missing person finds himself/herself, not in that of how the missing person looks like when in front of a video or photo camera.
Antonio Geusa