�Art of The Future�

Mimmo Rotella, October 1998

It was in occasion of my numerous trips around the world that I have had the opportunity to visit some Digital Art exhibitions

I've had the possibility myself, to operate with virtual signs, through a graphics tablet on the image of one of my works projected on a monitor. This being my intervention happened during the creation of a video, "The Virtual Tear", realized by Studio Metamorfosi and directed by Marco Porna. It was dedicated to me within an exhibition, which took place in Milan.

It would be interesting to imagine what influence on my artistic life, the presence of these innovative virtual instruments could be in the remote years of my "explorations".

Certainly, fundamental Larry Gartel in Rome, in the occasion of "Digipainting '97", the show organized by our mutual friend Maurizio Monticelli.

I appreciated his works and I observed that with his new and actual research of daily life, the cinema and the advertising world, he wants to express even if with a different medium, my same concepts and my same consideration of life and contemporary society.

I consider Larry Gartel the "creator and evangelist" of this new current, based on the new technologies and on a new way of thinking philosophy. Larry demonstrates a sensibility and sense of humor. His attention for form and content, along with his ability in "taming" a technical medium, makes him the "digital artist" of this time, ever eager for discovery of new forms and artistic expressions.

His works, utilizing these new virtual techniques, are sending messages created in the "now", but will be handed up to the third millennium.