STEFANO TAMBURINI
Accelerazione

21.3 – 25.8.2024
Macro – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome

Accelerazione (Acceleration) is an exhibition on the variegated graphic output of Stefano Tamburini, a prophetic “media engineer” whose work – ranging from design to music, by way of fashion, publishing and advertising – is reinterpreted in the light of the theme of acceleration, already central to his oeuvre and expanded here through written contributions by the philosopher Franco “Bifo” Berardi, the theorist Amy Ireland, the DJ and musician Steve Goodman and the designer Silvio Lorusso.
Killed by an overdose when he was just 30 years old, and famous in the world of comics as the inventor of the character Ranxerox – the ultra-violent cyborg inspired by the upheaval of 1977 in Rome and forerunner of figures like the Terminator – Stefano Tamburini was actually an all-around interpreter of the passage which led to the hyper-mediatized reality of the 1980s from the torrid climate of the Italian Sessantotto.
After making his debut very early in life in the underground sphere, in 1977 Tamburini founded the movement magazine Cannibale, which in 1980 triggered the monthly Frigidaire, his main creation and an ideal forum for all his future visual experiments. . For Frigidaire Tamburini took the role of graphic designer, developing the magazine’s cold and maximal aesthetic: using an iconic zigzag line made with pinking shears to add a sense of restless movement to the layout, obliquely inserting zones of colour, relying on striking lettering and conducting conceptual experiences of meta-fashion and Xerox art, Tamburini formulated a very personal street savvy response – frigid, ornery and coatta – to the emergent postmodern imaginary. He favoured plundered citation and deconstruction of the modern over its detached recuperation, the humour of the Roman outskirts where he was raised over the bourgeois irony of Milan, embodied by Mendini and Sottsass.
The exhibition reprises the artist’s typical attitude of pilfering and mixture of images, presenting a visual apparatus that abandons the concept of originality to dismantle the display of the fetish. 

Curators: Matteo Binci, Valerio Mattioli  
Curatorial Coordinator: Matteo Binci  
Production Coordinator: Maria Elena Ciullo  
Production Assistant: Giulia Corti  
Art Handlers: Fabio Pennacchia, Matteo Pompili  
Head of Press Office and Communication: Maddalena Bonicelli
Digital Content Editor: Nicoletta Graziano
Social Media Manager: Elena Fortunati
Web Manager / Digital Marketing: Andrea Pergola
Graphic Designer: Marco Campardo, Olivia Lynk

Heartfelt thanks to Alessandra Tamburini and Michele Mordente.