Alex Fakso
Alex Fakso, born in Italy, started out as a graffiti and skateboard photographer in the early ‘90s. His interest in photography let to studying it at the Arts Institute of Cittadella (Padova / Italy). Taking photos for over ten years, he quickly broadened his horizons and now takes photos with analog as well as digital cameras, color, and black&white, yet all coined by his own particular style.
Fakso’s interests is always in showing humans in a personal way. One of his on-going projects, “Heavy Metal”, documents graffiti writers painting their names on public transport. Being a graffiti writer himself, Fakso learned that painting a train and recording the result with a photo camera was not enough for him. He then focused on capturing the emotions and challenging situations himself and his friends had to go through. This included entering places strongly guarded by CCTV-cameras, barbwire and security personnel. Some of this photos have been published in his first book “Heavy Metal”, published 2007 by Damiani Editore.
His second book, “Fast or die”, is the successor of “Heavy Metal” and dives even deeper into the underground of the world’s major cities. The places Fakso works at, the silent and deserted subway tunnels, are the impressive scenario of his protagonists. The photos are authentic and raw and tell of the vivid atmospheres and the sensations of a parallel world that breaths and moves through the darkest bends of our cities.
In recent years, Alex Fasko has taken part in multiple exhibitions and art fairs around Europe. In 2016, in his largest installation to date, Fakso took over the enormous walls and lost & found objects of a disused military station for Outdoor Project, curated by Roman team Nu Factory. The exhibition titled “In your face” shown a brand new direction for the artist, his large-format photos were carefully distressed and applied onto industrial found items taking him from flat photographic paper to new hard volumes. Fakso’s new authentic approach attracted the curiosity of many and the show was followed by a group show at Wunderkrammer Gallery and being a featured artist for Moniker art fair in 2017 with an installation titled “Outlaws”.
Now, he relentless keeps working all over Europe, from Barcelona, London to Bucharest, Moscow as well as Tokyo, São Paulo and Los Angeles. Alex Fakso reconstructs the underground epic of a handful of credible dreamers who communicate only with each other, regardless of praise or criticism. Alex Fakso’s photography, its involvement, and its extraordinary evocative power performs an institutional task: it helps us learn and, if not share, somehow understand.
