Mauro Merola, in art Maurato, was born in Treviso in 1977, he moved to Milan as soon as he finished secondary school.
He is the winner of Public Prize of MostraMi2.
Completely self-taught, he puts himself immediately, even at elementary school, in drawing until he grows and he devotes to aerosolart, also known as “Graffiti Art” or “Writing”, for expressing on walls what he drew before on paper. Once he got the degree at Milan Politecnico, his personal evolution brought him to give three-dimensionality at his artworks, giving birth to “Plastic Puppetz”: a kind of “puppets” created putting together any kind of empty and used plastic can (mostly plastic ones), such as for example the shampoo can, eyewash, etc.
This putting together is not helped by glue, there is no glue nor sticks, but only plastic cable ties and a game of joints.
Plastic Puppetz are fruits of a creative path in which artistic evolution, even if it is going on, still shows the joint with street style, in shapes and details, in taste for colors of great impact as well.

Everything is part of a new universe where gang characters come out, as well as rockers, sexy girl puppets and baby puppetz, all of them express Maurato’s world.
Characters that become concrete connected to the passion for graffiti and hip hop culture.
The evolution that brought Maurato from spray paint to plastic materials shows the sensibility of an artist that learned to see beyond everyday reality.
Maurato claims his Peter Pan that knows how to surprise himself of banality of things that surround him: simple objects, very often without meaning, that fill the houses of any of us, but that only the artist look can get, transforming them with irony, reading them with lightness.

INFO/ PHOTO COURTESY: www.plasticpuppetz.com