Freedom Is Getting Out of the Box

“Freedom is getting out of the box,” this is the title of the great work that Parisi himself donated to the Pinacoteca di Como. It has a manifesto-like title that refers to a series of art and design studies with the unifying theme of the existential crisis of modern man, and the possibility of overcoming of this crisis through a new vision of living. Parisi could be called a “Renaissance” man, working as a photographer, filmmaker, designer, architect and a painter. Parisi will always be seen as a painter, in a more intimate and reserved way during the golden years of design, and in disruptive and explicit mode from the end of the 1960s. At that time of great social upheaval, Parisi moved away from his work as a designer to get closer to the avant-garde artistic and cultural movements, when the stimulus to represent his reflections on the existential condition of man became an artistic obsession. It led to the creation of his “boards of project solicitation,” collages, sketches and oils, which refer to economic, social, ethical and existential themes and to considerations on what he viewed as our increasingly alienated and “boxed in” way of life. In addition to these works, there is this cycle called “Freedom is getting out of the box”in which the narrow and cramped containing walls are not just the limit of the individual’s living space but also a cell, a mental niche in which man is forced into a kind of physical and psychological subjection. Breaking the material limits, destroying that box, like Dante’s circle to find freedom, and mending existential relationships are the ideas that drive Parisi support for a new path for life, one that is “total, involving, and without compromise.”(R. Lietta)