108 (Guido Bisagni) was born in Alessandria in 1978. He started painting approaching traditional graffiti, using several pseudonyms. At the end of the 90s, he has evolved both formally and conceptually and he becomes one of the first European post-graffiti artists working with abstract forms, painting large and mysterious figures that invade abandoned spaces. He was the first writer to use numbers instead of letters for his name. His work has appeared on the streets of Milan, Paris, London, Berlin, New York City, and San Francisco... It was his firm intention to make visual chaos, working also with 3D objects, sounds, and installations. In 2004 he was invited to Paris for Nusign 2.4 One of the first international exhibitions of street art and in 2005 he took part to the Urban Edge Show in Milan. Finally, in 2006 he graduated from the Polytechnic of Milan following design courses. in 2007 he was invited to join the project called Walls inside the Biennale di Venezia. In March 2008 he flew to Los Angeles with Eltono, Dem, Microbo, and other artists to represent Europe in the U.S.A. during the Nomadaz exhibition."As the street-art boom gained momentum during the early years of the twenty-first century, however, 108 found himself becoming increasingly dismayed by the often banal route it appeared to be taking. In contradistinction, he started to re-explore the abandoned buildings and factories in Alessandria that he had frequented during his youth. The combination of stark concrete walls and rationalist architecture he encountered there, together with the practical necessity of producing something both cheaply and quickly (a factor that had also inspired his use of adhesive stickers), led to the next stage in his artistic journey, what we might call 108’s “black period.”(Rafael Schacter in His "World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti") Whether it be within the confines of a small room in the abandoned monastery, where the large triangular constructions are most effective and have the effect of warping and playing with the room’s dimensions as the viewer attempts to back away and comprehend the pieces, or as a surreal floating void on a wall beside a busy road. Colors appear again like small pieces that sleep inside the black. 108 collects many solo exhibitions around Italy and Europe, he took part in many of the contemporary festivals and exhibitions like the first Biennale of Urban Art in Moscow (2014) or Mapping the City at the Somerset house of London (2015).

This time we hosted 108 in residency at the new Varsi Lab, thus having the opportunity to deepen and expand his screen print research.

The synergy created, today as in the past, between 108 and 56Fili, finds its roots in the common passion for experimentation, which led on this occasion to the realization of a wide variety of prints, which differ in both technique and format.

In fact, the new production of 108 for Varsi consists of a series of four limited-edition silkscreen works and five unique hand-finished pieces.

The resulting body of works is inspired by the artist’s recognizable style, but grows and evolves from it. And so it is that in the “game” of screen-printing, 108 finds space to add a piece to what he calls the “aesthetics of error” inherent in his entire research, which harks back to an Oriental reading of reality, both philosophically and graphically. The Japanese philosopher Yamamoto Tsunetomo wrote thus:

“One man claimed, ‘I know the shape of reason and error.’ When someone asked him for clarification on this, he replied, ‘Reason has four corners and does not move even in an extreme situation. Error is round and, not distinguishing between good and evil, right and wrong, it lets itself roll everywhere to one side and the other.”

And 108 in the form of error lets himself roll to one side and to the other and builds his aesthetics and artistic thought: soft shapes are tinged with black to evoke the irrational side of things, and they are countered by orthogonal, colorful signs that attempt (often in vain) to bring order and make sense out of chaos.

Thanks to 56Fili’s experience, the concept of mass printing is challenged and error can thus be transposed onto paper. Subtraction, waste, and superimposition make it possible to manipulate the machine by recreating the textural strokes and the skillful use of color that characterize 108’s works on canvas and that characterize his entire imagery.

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