The Cracking Art movement was born in 1993 with the intention to radically change the history of art through a strong social and environmental commitment. The revolutionary use of plastic materials investigates the close relationship between natural and artificial reality. The group dimension doesn’t limit each individual artist’s creativity: each member of the movement also works independently to develop their own interpretation of contemporary problems and tensions.
The name “Cracking Art” comes from the English verb “to crack”, which express the state of being split, broken, cracked, or crashed.
This catalytic cracking, as the name suggests, is also the term for the chemical reaction that occurs when converting raw crude oil into plastic. For the artists, it represents the instant when something natural becomes artificial and is the reason why they seek to seize that very moment in their art form.
Plastic has its roots in a millenary tradition of civilization, in a huge and deep cultural evolution that links together the human being, artificial creation and the environment. In a certain sense, “cracking” could be considered as a conceptual formula used to challenge the rules of contemporary art.
The choice of regenerated and regenerable plastic for its aesthetic appeal shows acceptance of the inevitability of our world becoming increasingly artificial. The artworks are designed to inspire a community-wide conversation about the importance and the environmental impact of regeneration while leaving a potent artistic trace in the communities we live in.
The artworks are designed to inspire a community-wide conversation about the anthropic effect on the natural environment through engaging performative projects in which out-of-scale installations- such as the worldwide known coloured animals- invade all kind of spaces, from those that are normally dedicated to art exhibit to then appear unexpectedly in everyday places.
Regenerated plastic removes it from its toxic role in nature, and communicates, through an unconventional language, the importance of paying strong attention to our planet.
