Many of Alex Urso’s dioramas (boxes and assemblages) aims to create an “anachronistic” interaction between himself and authors from the past. Through the dislocation of forms and figures of the Tradition, operated by using the technique of collage and assemblage, he brings forth fragments of past artworks into the present and interacts with them.

With each of these elements (authors or scraps of works) Urso plays with irony, interacting to create a dialogue that puts into discussion the authenticity of art history as has been passed down, namely as a succession of certain and creditable events.

In particular, the Negerplastik series(2014) is a personal reinterpretation of Carl Einstein’s book from 1920. The essay, credited as being one of first important publications acknowledging African art in Europe, aimed to elect to art what, up to that point, was considered mere and primitive craft.

So it’s not without reason that Urso uses cut-out pages from the book as the lining of the boxes in which he presents triumphant figures of victorious African-American athletes and militant Black Panthers.