Marcello Barenghi

**Marcello Barenghi** was an Artist act from FantasyAGT: Battle of the Champions. He was eliminated in the Preliminaries.

## Background

Born in 1969, I was born and raised in Milan in a stimulating environment: my father loved drawing, painting, clay modeling and building model fighter planes that were attached to the ceiling and to the wall of my bedroom. I always tried to catch the airplanes when my mom took me in her arms and we passed by, but of course I was not allowed. My parents still have one of my first drawings, I was 18 months only and I was doodling on my chair, from the doodle came out, coincidentally, a three-dimensional plane; I couldn't touch them, but I could draw them!

But my true passion for drawing came out when I was attending elementary school; armed with pens and paper, I started to draw my favorite cartoon and comic characters: Spider-Man, Steel Jeeg and Mazinger! In those years I was inspired by the comics artist Gil Kane. In the early 80s I discovered colored pencils, though I feel immediately the need for a technique that allows me to color and shade uniformly large areas and backgrounds, without the granular texture. However, thanks to the colored pencils, when I was 11 I won a computer zx81, by participating in a TV contest with a caricature of Gaetano Scirea (a famous Italian football player) when Roberto Bettega announcing the winner said: "the first prize goes to Mister Marcello Barenghi!". My mother on the phone tried to explain him that I was only a child, but he didn't believe her.

Those are the years that my parents realized that they had to encourage my artistic skills. It always makes me smile to see that picture of the skiing holiday at Passo Mendola: my brother and my cousin excluded me from building a snowman, so I decided to make one all by myself. I also participated in two drawing competitions with a religious theme, receiving two honorable mentions by the then Archbishop Carlo Maria Martini. In the mid-80s, I got to attend the Art School "Boccioni" in Milan where I began with copies from life, using charcoal and sanguine pencil, and I learned the techniques of tempera, watercolor and 3-D modeling with clay.

Luciano Formica, great art restorer, was my Plastic Arts teacher. I remember him with admiration and affection; immediately after graduation, before deciding to continue studying, I worked at his studio for some time, restoring a Roman mosaic and part of the Roman circus in Milan.

In those years (1985) I found the solution to my technical problems: the airbrush. I went to buy it on the other side of the city, bringing home a heavy compressor. Thanks to the gun I was able to improve the effect of my pencil drawings. In those years I was fascinated by the work of Derek Riggs for Iron Maiden, I worked hard on the character of Eddie and on my way to represent him, greatly improving my technique. After high school, I enrolled at the School of Illustration "Arte e Messaggio" in Milan, at the Sforzesco Castle, where my teacher Anna Montecroci was without doubt my point of reference. She was the first to talk about my personal style of hyperrealism and she advised me to leave for USA or France. In the early 90s I was inspired by the work of some great designers: Hajime Sorayama with its chrome robot, Tanino Liberatore, with its magnificent Ranxerox, Richard Corben, Eleuteri Serpieri with his Druna and Simon Bisley. They are very different, but all of them are great: for technical, vision or both. In the mid-90s, the crisis and the computer graphics seem to mark the end of the traditional illustration, So I decided to stop drawing and I continued to study, graduating in Architecture and passing the Italian professional exam at the Polytechnic University of Milan. I could spend a lot of words talking about the disappointment that I got in my passed working career, but I prefer to focus on the positive things. So, twenty years after quitting, as I watched some drawing videos on YouTube, I decided to open a channel and start a new adventure...

I have been called "The hyper-realist artist of the common things in the era of YouTube", Potentially I am fascinated by everything, I am used to look at an object taking into account its reflections, the lights, the shadows, its colors and shape. Every single object has its own beauty, also an empty bag of potato chips. I like to decontextualize and make protagonists branded products and objects that accompany us in our daily lives, sometimes from childhood and throughout our life. We don't give them importance, though, we are moved to see the out of production candies we ate as children, or the Walkman that we used in the 80s. I simply want to say: "Hey, have you seen how beautiful is the Ketchup you have in the fridge?". It 's true, my drawings are hyper-realistic, but it is also true that you can find my style in each of them, my own way of translating reality. My drawings are not perfect, I'm never happy with the result, I often get angry because I can see a lot of flaws that I always hope to correct in the next work. However, limitations and imperfections represent the style and anyone who has a keen eye will always identify my drawings, without the need to look at the signature. [1]

## Preliminary

Marcello Barenghi's preliminary performance in Episode BC05 consisted of quickly drawing a seemingly 3-D M&M's peanut bag. Mike and Fresh gave him standing ovations. His performance was not strong enough for the judges to send him to Judge Cuts, eliminating him from the competition along with Denys Dytynuik,Hairo Torres, Blue Whale Bros and Taylor Williamson.