A Declaration of War Against Artistic Complacency
Art is not a luxury. It is not a commodity. It is not a neatly packaged product for collectors and speculators to trade like stocks. Art should be raw, uncomfortable, and sometimes even painful. That is why art exist.
We are Fronte Acciaio Cromato (F.A.C.), and we are not here to please you. Since 2015, we operate from a small workshop in the center of Carrara and have been dismantling the pretensions of the contemporary art world with our work, a chaotic fusion of sculpture, painting, screen printing, and installation + video art. We come from Germany and China, but we have made Carrara, Italy, our battlefield. The city of marble, where sculptors have flocked for centuries, is our home, but we refuse to be just another chapter in its long artistic history. We are here to rip up the rulebook and spit on the pages.
Our name says it all: Fronte, because our art is a constant war, against a system that isolates and excludes independent artists, against market-driven mediocrity, against the arrogance of intellectuals who believe art must always be deeply profound and “meaningful in a common sense” Acciaio Cromato (Chrome-Plated Steel), because like our names (Krome and Stahlberg) we are unyielding. Our name is no accident
ART IS NOT A MIRROR to reflect the world in, but a hammer with which to shape it. Vladimir Mayakovsky
PROVOCATION IS OUR WEAPON – BUT NEVER OUR GOAL
Too much of what passes for contemporary art today is sterilized, safe, and designed to blend seamlessly into wealthy living rooms. That’s not what we do. Our work is provocative, aggressive, and often absurd. We do not create for approval. We do not seek validation from the elite circles of curators and critics who define what is “worthy” of recognition.
WE PROVOKE – AND WE GET PROVOKED
We provoke because provocation is necessary. The images we create disturb, amuse, and sometimes even disgust. They demand a reaction. But once the initial shock fades, the real work begins, the work of thinking. Because nothing we do is without meaning. Our art may be irreverent, but it is never meaningless. “Most of the public can no longer be captivated by dumbed-down slogans or coercive stylistic choices.”
Art must be like a hammer. It must break things apart. It must challenge, disturb and, if necessary, hurt. But it can also make you laugh. It can be absurd, ridiculous, grotesque. What matters is that it leaves a mark.
THE CRUXIALS: EVERYONE CARRIES A CROSS
One of our most notorious projects is The Cruxials, a series of resin crucifixes featuring cultural and political figures, both famous and unknown. Angela Merkel, Beppe Grillo, Michael Jackson, Lemmy Kilmister, even artists and bartenders from Carrara, no one is safe.
Blasphemous? Perhaps. Judgmental? Not at all. Every person has their cross to bear, their burden to carry. We are simply making it visible. In a world where public perception can turn someone from a hero to a villain overnight, crucifixion is no longer just a religious concept, it is a social reality. The mob is always hungry for a new sacrifice, and history has shown it will always find one.
And so, we give everyone their own cross. It is both a condemnation and an invitation to reflect.
FUCK THE F.A.C
We are not here to cater to the art establishment. We are not here to bow to curators and gallery owners who decide what has value and what does not. We will sell our work, of course, but not at the cost of our independence.
We despise intellectual arrogance. The art world is full of pseudo-intellectuals who hide their lack of originality behind jargon and academic posturing. They talk endlessly but say nothing. We refuse to play their game.
We are not anarchists for the sake of it. We are not rebels without a cause. But in a world where conformity is rewarded and true creativity is suffocated, resistance is the only rational response.
Our philosophy? Turn over the garbage and shit until the stench becomes unbearable. If we make enough noise, if we push hard enough, if we expose enough of the rot beneath the surface, maybe, just maybe, something will change.
We don’t care about fake respect. The sacred cows of the art world are bloated and overfed. The ivory towers are full. And we still stand by what has been true for decades: God is still on holidays.
PINK? BECAUSE IT’S THE MOST NONCONFORMIST COLOR OF ALL
Pink dominates our work for a reason. It’s not about femininity. It’s not about gender. It’s about reclaiming a color that has been hijacked by consumerism.
Pink is the first color we see at birth. It is pure perception, free of gender divisions, free of cultural baggage, until society forces meaning onto it.
For us, pink is rebellion. Pink is subversion. Pink is a weapon against machismo, against artistic clichés, against the very idea of what “serious” art should look like.
That’s why pink is everywhere in our work. Not the pastel pink of childhood fairy tales, but the violent, neon, screaming pink that refuses to be ignored. A color that has been dismissed as weak, feminized and decorative. We take it back. We make it a weapon. We use it to shatter expectations. Our Serigrafi series for example is a direct response to our own experience as outsiders. We took phrases we overheard during our early years in Italy, phrases we didn’t understand at the time, often insults and turned them into art.
Phrases like:
“F*** you, laugh! I’ll c** in your mouth, you ugly giant slut.”
“F*** me doggy style.”
“It’s always nice to be overrated.”
We put them out there to force a reaction. Laugh, get angry, be confused, just don’t ignore it!
We don’t create delicate, polished works that sit quietly in a corner. Our art is loud. It invades your space. It demands to be seen in CARRARA, THE CITY THAT DOESN’T WELCOME OUTSIDERS
F.A.C. IS OUR MOVEMENT, NOT A BRAND
Our studio in Carrara is more than a workspace, it is a battleground. Part workshop, part gallery, part chaotic experiment. We work with resin, plaster, marble, stone. We use our hands, not just machines. We print our own screen prints. We carve, we paint, we destroy, we rebuild.
We are not alone. In the art world, our names are known. Dominik Stahlberg is a member of NO!art, an anti-art, avant-garde movement born in New York in the late 1950s, a movement dedicated to dismantling the consumerist, imperialist, fashion-driven art world. Stefanie Krome is the Switzerland & north-Italy coordinator for Sculpture Network, an international network of sculptors.
The two of us were shaped by the German punk scene of the 1990s, one of us grew up in China, and we all left our homelands to study sculpture in Carrara. We stayed because we found something even more valuable, freedom. Our space in Carrara, has become a hub: a living, breathing archive of our journey. Works from our earliest days sit alongside ongoing projects. We are constantly evolving, constantly producing, constantly fighting.
ART AS A NECESSITY
Art is not something we do when we have time. It is something we do because we have no choice. We will continue to create, to provoke, to challenge. We will continue to host exhibitions, to open dialogues, to force people to confront uncomfortable truths. Our space in Carrara is open to those who are willing to question, to those who are not afraid to feel.
We do not seek approval. We do not ask permission. NO is rational and the rational is NO.
Keep moving. Let it go. Enjoy life while you can. Bad things happen, but so do the good things.
Aloha.
Wanna know more? Take a look at our project BIOGRAPHY.
