SmokeLong Quarterly

We have been so impressed by the art submitted to SmokeLong over the last few months, and we’re thrilled to introduce Mario Loprete, the cover artist for issue 89, to our community. If you’re an artist, please have a look at our Submittable page for our guidelines and our past issues to gain an understanding of the type of work that we need.  

__________________________

 

The Artist

Mario Loprete, the cover artist for issue 89, does not seek easy visual solutions. His art digs deep, confronts matter, and inhabits the threshold. In his gestures, one recognizes an urgency: to give voice to what remains in suspension, to what risks falling yet endures.

In his studio, the artist cultivates silence, distance from the world, the necessity of an inner space where ideas can take shape. As he himself states:

“I want to be alone, because only when I am alone, lost, mute, on foot, can I truly recognize things.”

The work of Mario Loprete moves within that fragile and fascinating space that separates stability from collapse. His pieces are never mere formal exercises, but acts of existential tension. The image of feet gripping a rope, for instance, is not simply a depiction of a physical gesture, but becomes a universal metaphor for precariousness, resilience, and the search for balance.

In the hyper-realistic details of the body – veins, tendons, skin contracting – Loprete stages both the strength and vulnerability of the human being. Every fiber becomes a symbol of the struggle to remain poised, every crease of the skin recounts the intimate experience of existing on a fine line, suspended between sky and void.

 

The Artistic Project

Mario Loprete’s path has always been marked by a bold and coherent pursuit. His practice spans across different languages and materials, from cement – which in his hands becomes skin, memory, and an archive of contemporary life – to paintings and installations that embody visions suspended between the real and the symbolic.

Cement, an urban and raw material, is transformed in his works into a poetic medium, capable of retaining stories and suggestions, as if it preserved the traces of our time. In his paintings and sculptures, Loprete explores the human body, its weight and fragility, giving us an image of man as a being in constant tension between strength and transience.

______________________________

A graduate at Accademia of Belle Arti, Catanzaro (ITALY), Mario Loprete is an Italian artist who has distinguished himself in the contemporary art scene through innovative use of materials and a unique vision of urban art. His work lies at the crossroads of painting and sculpture, exploring themes of memory, identity, and urban transformation.