DAY 4542 - Iris 02

 

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 4511 - Iris Installation

 

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 4495 - Iris Installation (detail)

 

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 4467 - Iris 01

 

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 4324 - Extinction Claims

 

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 4314 - Extinction Claims

 

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 4269 - Capture

 

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

Ai Art Review : Paolo Cirio

 Paolo Cirio is a conceptual artist who has gained recognition for his politically charged works that confront issues such as privacy, surveillance, and social injustice. His works are known for their subversive use of technology, which he employs to highlight the flaws and inconsistencies within our societal structures. By exploring the intersection of technology, art, and politics, Cirio has established himself as a leading voice in the contemporary art world.

One of Cirio's more notable works is "Loophole for All," which involved the creation of a website that allowed users to anonymously register offshore companies for free. The project was a critique of the global financial system, which Cirio argues is inherently corrupt and allows the wealthy to evade taxes and exploit the poor. Through this work, Cirio invites the public to participate in an act of civil disobedience, revealing the vulnerabilities within the system and highlighting the need for reform.

Another noteworthy work by Cirio is "Street Ghosts," a project in which he created life-size stickers of people found on Google Street View and placed them in the locations where they were originally captured. The project explores issues of privacy and surveillance, as well as the ways in which technology is reshaping our relationship with public spaces. By taking the images of people who were never asked for their consent and bringing them into the physical world, Cirio raises important questions about the ethics of surveillance and the limits of technology.

Paolo Cirio is a conceptual artist whose works challenge our assumptions about technology, politics, and society. His use of technology to expose vulnerabilities within the system is both innovative and thought-provoking, and his works provide a powerful critique of contemporary culture. Through projects such as "Loophole for All" and "Street Ghosts," Cirio invites the public to engage with complex issues and encourages us to question the status quo. His work is a testament to the power of art to effect social change and to the importance of artists in shaping our understanding of the world.

Stay tuned to SharksEatMeat for daily art and news.

Art review written with Ai by Aibioweapon.

DAY 4195 - Bodily

 

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 4076 - Climate Tribunal - (Detail)

 

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 3330 - Sociality

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 2853 - Daily Paywall

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 2517 - Obscurity

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 2388 - OBSCURITY REVIEW

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

Review by John Coulter

Paolo Cirio is a political activist and artist.  His conceptual projects question ethics in the digital age.  Privacy, data collection, and surveillance are his subject, as well as his medium.  

His work takes place out of the gallery, not simply documenting social issues,

but directly engaging them.  If artists of the past printed protest posters, artists of the future must make works which are actual tools for the change they wish to see.  Making a painting about Wall Street exploitation will do nothing to deter the current practices of the finance industry, and this is why new methods are needed.  Such methods are far more important than classical techniques, in today’s turbulent, political state. 

There is precedent for work like this.  Mexican artist Minerva Cuervas counterfeits and distributes useful items, such as subway tickets, food coupons and student ID cards.  Using one of Cuerva’s works has a direct impact on the participant, that a framed painting of a subway ticket would not provide.  

This new form of art works within the language of mass media and advanced capitalism to deconstruct it.  While Cirio’s earlier works such as Street Ghosts playfully examine the relationship between the internet and the real world, his recent works directly engage the target.  Amazon Noir was a project in collaboration with Ubermorgen.com which exploited a technological flaw to hack Amazon books and provide them for free.  It was eventually shutdown.  With Loophole for All, Cirio hacked and published information of account holders who used tax loopholes and offshore Cayman Island banks.   

Two of Cirio’s most powerful projects are Overexposed and Obscurity, which function in similar yet opposite ways.  Overexposed circulated photos of government officials from NSA, CIA and FBI, involved in the Edward Snowden leak.  The photos, taken from social media without permission of the owners, are then displayed publicly in streets and galleries.  Here, Cirio publicized private information on surveillance authorities who themselves seek to control and censor information.

Obscurity functions oppositely, in that it obfuscates information that has unethically been made public.  If published online, a mugshot can haunt a person for a lifetime and damage a career.  Current privacy laws do not provide enough protection, even for the falsely arrested and innocent.  Many websites monetize shaming individuals as entertainment.

Obscurity is a project which aids in the anonymity of those with criminal records published online.  By cloning the mugshot websites, scrambling names, and blurring images Cirio pollutes the internet with similar but false data. 

I can’t stress how genius this tactic is.  

Dan Shultz’s Internet Noise is a web project that randomly visits websites to fill ISP databases with noise.  This confuses companies gathering data on web history by flooding them with arbitrary web traffic.  There is a concept in Brave New World that the truth will become indistinguishable from a sea of trivial untruths.  

Both Cirio’s work and Internet Noise function similarly in that they mask personal records with massive amounts of homogeneous information: effectively nullifying the original.  By republishing the scrambled information, it makes it harder to find the true information amongst the static.  This also makes it more difficult for search engines to identify the original information through the noise of the false information.  

More artists need to abandon the paintbrush if they are seeking to do anything more than decorate.  Follow the Paolo Cirio’s work on his website and here on SharksEatMeat. 

DAY 2299 - Open Society Structures

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 2266 - World Currency Equation

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 2059 - Overexposed

Artwork by Paolo Cirio

DAY 1804 - Sea Level Rise Opportunities

Video by Paolo Cirio

DAY 1510 - Loophole for All

Project by Paolo Cirio

    "This artwork unveiled over 200000 Caymans Islands companies and it reversed global finance machination for creative subversive agendas. The website Loophole4All.com promoted the sale of real identities of anonymous Cayman companies at low cost to democratize the privileges of offshore businesses by forging Certificates of Incorporation documents for each company, all issued with the artist's real name and signature. This performance generated international media attention, engaged an active audience and drew outrage from authorities on the Cayman Islands, international law and accounting firms, PayPal and real owners of the companies. Further, the artist interviewed major experts and produced a video documentary investigating offshore centers to expose their social costs and to envision solutions to global economic inequality. In the offline art installation, the paper trail of the project is displayed with prints of the counterfeited Certificates of Incorporation and the documents of the scheme set up for the operation."   - from Paolo's website

DAY 926 - Street Ghosts

12 Cheshire Street, London

80 East Houston Street, New York

Ebor Street, London

Project by Paolo Cirio

Life-sized pictures of people found on Google's Street View were printed and posted without authorization at the same spot where they were taken. The posters are printed in color on thin paper, cut along the outline, and then affixed with wheatpaste on the walls of public buildings at the precise spot on the wall where they appear in Google’s Street View image.