Gianluca Lerici (Prof. Bad Trip)

Between the 70s and 80s Gianluca Lerici is known in his area as “Gianluca Punk”, born in La Spezia on the 21st of May 1963, single child of “naval marconist” father and “apprensive over-protective housewife” mother, a “muscolaio” (muscle packager) in the summer and unrestful student the rest of the year.

DJ for Radio Popolare Alternativa in La Spezia from 1979 to 1983 with a provoking taste in music, between 1980 and 1982 he is singer for hardcore punk band Holocaust (after a few years experience in shabby highschool band Putrefax), thus taking part in the most extreme and politicised punk scene in Italy which will eventually be known as the Granducato Hardcore.

Gianluca creates his first do-it-yourself fanzine cutting out images from magazines and history books, “Anarchy”, only two photocopied numbers with collages that in some way remind of Winston Smith (the highly thought of resident graphic designer at Dead Kennedy’s Alternative Tentacles). Among the punk records he so loves to collect, is the first album by californian hardcore band The Angry Samoans, Inside MyBrain, released in 1980 by Bad Trip Records. Life often offers “bad trips” therefore, with anichilist punk attitude, Lerici decides to sign his visual work as Bad Trip Productions. With Benzo of punk band Fall Out from La Spezia, a companion of musical adventures that he met in 1978 coming out from school, Lerici produces the punk fanzine "Archaeopteryx" in a pure "Crass style", of which a few numbers came out between 1981 and 1984 (the first two were duplicated with “heliocopies”, and subsequent editions were printed at the Carrara anarchist typography), an organically close publication to the vibrant hardcore punk subculture of the time (but Gianluca also happens to sing Mongoloid by Devo during a live radio performance).

Lerici starts doing graphic design and articles for fanzines as Bad Trip, also self-producing t-shirts and flyers for concerts of the punk scene of the Lunigiana. In the same years, he takes part in demonstrations and acts of protest, entering several times in conflict with the authorities and institutions in charge: the police receives seven separate complaints accusing him of occupation of a social center, damage, unauthorized march, resistance and insulting a public official, resulting in a total of four days in jail. In 1983 Lerici meets Jenamarie Filaccio, a young American sculptor and inseparable future life partner.

In 1987, as part of the Azione Aliena trio, Lerici takes part in a concert at Kronstatd social center of La Spezia (partly documented on tape) and produces graphic material for the homonymous paper/fanzine called "Azione Aliena". The following year, he works with his friend Tingis providing drawings, layouts and more for “Stanza 101” fanzine, printed in Carrara, for the first issue he also writes about recycling techniques in art, from Dada collages to today in the article "Riciclart!".

Leaving high school due to "incompatibility of character”, Gianluca moved to art high school in Carrara and later attended the local Academy of Fine Arts where, after a year of painting, he graduated in sculpture in 1988. During the Academy courses, in opposition to the apathy and ignorance of the teachers and the entire student environment towards new trends in contemporary art, Lerici self-proclaimed himself professor, becoming permanently Professor Bad Trip.

After completing his studies between the 80s and 90s, the young artist perfects his unique graphic style with thick black wavy lines, inspired by legendary authors of the tradition of underground and mainstream comics (Basil Wolverton, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, Robert Crumb, Robert Williams, Magnus, etc.), but also by rock and psychedelic counterculture, by abnormal and disturbing films by David Cronenberg and David Lynch, by the dystopian fiction of writers like William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick, direct precursors of the "cyberpunk" imaginary of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. The incessant work and squiggly hallucinated style becomes evermore unmistakable, soon leading Gianluca to broaden his collaborations beyond the boundaries of the West Coast hardcore scene. A close partnership is established in particular with members of the Milanese collective ShaKe editions, led by E. "Gomma" Guarneri and Raf Valvola, for which Lerici makes numerous spaced out cover collages, delirious comic stories of punk degradation and Orwellian techno-tribal illustrations for the "international underground magazine "Decoder”.

Thanks to the high profile of "Decoder", one of the best known and appreciated Italian fanzines of the time, the art of Professor Bad Trip (which makes no use of computers) is increasingly identified with issues of the cyberpunk movement, booming in the early 90s and merging countercultural libertarian traditions and new information technologies along with previously unheard of rebelliuos figures (like hackers). Lerici also expands his contacts and cooperation with other publishers in the field of independent comics and illustration (R&R Editrice) and those close to the antagonist cultures (AAA Edizioni, Castelvecchi, Stampa Alternativa, Manifesto libri) not forgetting collaboration with major publishers such as Mondadori, for which the artist created many covers (among the best known are those for the early Niccolò Ammaniti books). Eventually Gianluca will illustrate the covers for a few of his authors of reference, like the theoretician of situationism Guy Debord (for Oscar Mondadori) and the science fiction author P.K. Dick (for Agenzia X), Edgar Allan Poe (I Miti Mondadori) and the "multiple individual" Luther Blissett (Mondadori, AAA Edizioni).

Lerici creates numerous illustrations for various books and one-off publications for AAA Edizioni run by friends Piermario Ciani and Vittore Baroni, completing in 1996 the 48 "monstrous" black and white postcards for the cut-out book called Freak Shock, unfortunately never published. Prof. Bad Trip’s work also appears on popular magazines that were sold on newsstands such as the influential "Frigidaire" (Stefano Tamburini is one of Gianluca’s cult authors) and "Tempi Supplementari", the monthly music magazines "Rockerilla" (where he oversees the "column of obsessions and cultural garbage" called “Trash”, with texts by Vittore Baroni) and “Rumore” (the comic strip "Rumore"), "Pulp libri", "Tic", etc. Meanwhile Gianluca carries on with "militant" partnerships with many fanzines, political magazines of the “movement” and underground publications, which often feature designs by Bad Trip on the cover: "Vinile", "DeriveApprodi", "Perterra", "Insekten Sekte", "Delirio", "Underground", "Cyber Zone", "Techno Body Way", "Amen: this is religion", "Aparte", "Next Exit", etc.
Complying with his passion for rock music and sound experimentation, Gianluca also creates through the years countless record covers, flyers, posters and t-shirts for a number of punk bands and projects of the industrial-electronic area (Fall Out, Polvere di Pinguino, Nuts, Double Deck 5, Starfuckers, Meathead, Zeni Geva, The A-10, Officine Schwartz, Psychic TV, Forbici di Manitù, Evolution So Far, Gargantha, Radio Zero, etc.). The Professor also accepts commercial commissions from a well-known label of La Spezia doing covers of numerous bootlegs and unofficial live recordings of rock legends (The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, Yes, Santana, AC / DC, etc.), designing for some of these elaborate illustrated booklets as well. Also many posters and graphic works were done for social centers of the peninsula, from Milan to Palermo, or for anarchist festivals and events (to which he will always feel very close because of his anarchic-libertarian beliefs) or for related situations like Katodik Karma cultural association of La Spezia (for a more complete list of annotated collaborations and publications, see the articulated section dedicated to Gianluca Lerici in the web site www.gomma.tv edited by E. "Gomma" Guarneri).

From September 1989 Gianluca was in Salerno on compulsory military service with the 89th Infantry Brigade "Salerno", for which he was commissioned to draw the official calendar of 1990 (now a rarity for collectors) in his own mildly camouflaged comic style. During the military service he continues doing prints, drawings and collages although in precarious conditions, using rubber stamps and stationery pilfered from military offices. As soon as he finished military service, Gianluca found employment at a private art school in La Spezia where he taught art for a year, becoming "Professor" to all effects, an experience that he will repeat later teaching at the NABA (New Academy of Fine Arts) in Milan.

At the turn of the 80s and 90s, Bad Trip records some cassettes at home in limited editions, performing with Jena on electronic keypads and toy instruments, using various ghost names (Garbage Pail Kids, The Body Parts, The Bad Trips, etc.). Gianluca also likes to appear as DJ in private parties and public situations, drawing vinyls from his large collection and adopting different names (Prof. Bad Trip DJ, Vinyl Junkie DJ, Jocko Homo DJ, DJ Partizan, etc.) offering different kinds of music ranging from 50s pop-trash to classic psychedelia, from political Italian folk music from the 60s and 70s to heavy hardcore techno. At Halloween one could often run into a DJ-set by Gianluca at Scaletta club or at the Portrait Cafe in La Spezia, but the Professor also prepares themed performances, such as the selection of robotic music (70s electronics, 80s industrial, 90s trash techno) presented in 1999 under the title Il garage ermetico at the Gallery of the Museo dell’Arredo Contemporaneo in Russi (Ravenna).

In 1991 Lerici completes the comic story "Dirk Dare the Dark Surfer" on text by Baroni for a project of the Milanese record label Vox Pop / Pop Eye, never published, consisting of a comic book with attached 45 rpm vinyl single of the track "Island of the Surfin’ Zombies" directly inspired by the comic, already recorded by the 60s inspired band Franz & I Vigliacchi from Ravenna. In the same year, the artist participates in the Stickerman collective project, launched by Piermario Ciani, making a series of comic strips with the adventures of the costumed superhero Stickerman, the "first self-adhesive comic" to be released in the urban context as a form of (micro) street art.

In 1992 ShaKe editions publishes a hardback comic booklet called Naked Lunch, loosely based on the controversial novel (repeatedly censored for obscenity) by the legendary writer William S. Burroughs with unpublished interview and introduction by the Beat Generation expert Fernanda Pivano, a visionary descent into the abyss of addiction to hard drugs that remains to this day the most famous work of Professor Bad Trip.
Moving to the village of Castelpoggio in the province of Carrara in the early 90s, Gianluca and Jenamarie devise a small home workshop for screen printing (jokingly called "Cuban prison”), experimenting on papers, cloth, PVC stickers and on various other materials including woodcuts, hand-engraved prints and other innovative combinations of different techniques.

The headquarters of Castelpoggio - where a continuous stream of postcards, posters, stickers, prints, micro-comics, t-shirts, etc. are self-produced - named Organic Mutation Institute, is a fantastic pseudo-institution that promises to preserve and promote images of creatures which have undergone organic mutations (due to genetic causes, ecological disasters, chemical wars, etc.). From the ancient village on the slopes of the Apuan Alps, Lerici intertwines contacts, collaborates with dozens of international authors part of the planetary circuit of mail art or of the jagged cartoon underground, activating synergies in particular with Milan based Matteo Guarnaccia (historical figure of the Italian underground) and with the Dutch comics artist Marcel Ruijters, with whom Gianluca creates some joint pages, such as the cover of the book/magazine La Bestia 1. Narrative invaders !, published in 1997 by Costa & Nolan. Also very productive is the meeting with the Roman collector and postcard historian Enrico Sturani, who commissions and publishes for Bad Trip a variety of postcards, involving him in various initiatives.

His circle of correspondents also leads to the publication of works in various magazines, fanzines and international collections. The Professor is for example the only Italian author included with two illustrations in Revelation X (Fireside/Simon & Schuster, New York 1994), the second anthology "bible" of the Church of the SubGenius by J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, an underground and satirical anti-cult, popular in North America and subsequently introduced to the Italian public by the book La Chiesa del SugGenius (Prog Edizioni, Sarzana 1997) by The SubJesus, Guido Slitta and Khiko, for whom Lerici realizes the cover and various illustrations.
Between 1994 and 1996, Gianluca directs in La Spezia with Jena, Chicco Crash and Massimo the Comicland editions, an independent shop for books and comics of various alternative publishing houses that also produces its own four anthologies modeled on the classic American underground comic books (à la "Zap"). Presenting both published and unpublished Bad Trip comics along with other authors, Bad Trip Comix, Double Dose, Bad Mutants and Psycho enjoy an underground popularity. As Comicland’s activity ended, two already programmed anthologies remained unfinished on The Beast and Paranoid Hallucinations themes, as was an "apocalyptic” Snakes and Ladders game ready for publishing in 1995 (the project of the board game will later be revised and proposed for publication as a Christmas gift to Mondadori, without success).

Comicland also handles distribution of original t-shirts, posters, screen prints, cards and sets of Professor Bad Trip stickers. Self-produced "trading cards", an alternative version of the traditional baseball cards, particularly intrigues the artist, in the 80s and 90s he creates and prints several different themed series in limited editions, from cybernetic characters and mutants from his comics, to "Rockstars of Tomorrow", cult rock musician figurines made for "Rumore" magazine, and the 16 horrific "Trash Trading Cards" annexed in 1990 to the n. 62 of the mail art magazine "Arte Postale!".

Without ever entirely abandoning ink drawing, as from the early 90s Lerici is more and more committed to painting, creating works on canvas of various sizes, mostly painted in vivid acrylic colors, which he began to exhibit in public and private places. The author begins a close collaboration with the Mascherino gallery in Rome directed by Stefano Dello Schiavo, where in 1995 he has his first high-profile solo exhibition, Professor Bad Trip - Mostra di Psicopitture, followed by a second solo exhibition in 1997, then in the same year he presents the show Brain Danger paired with Jenamarie Filaccio (marble sculptures of Jena and Gianluca’s paintings) and takes part in other group shows and events organized by the Roman gallery. Another double exhibition, with masks/sculptures by Jena painted by Bad Trip is Wall-Heads in 1998 at the Cabaret Voltaire social club of La Spezia, reflecting the mutual poetic influence between the two artists. Among the many group exhibitions the Professor takes part in is Blood Runner (Rave hangar Fiat, Rome, 1995) and D.E.V.O. - Dinamiche Evolutive Visioni Organiche in 1996 at Giulia Gallery, Rome.

In 1997, Gianluca and Jena leave Castelpoggio and move to an apartment in the center of La Spezia. It’s hard to keep track of solo and group exhibitions that take place in a constant flow, in La Spezia for example, Pitture e grafiche psicotrope at PerForm Contemporary Art in 2002, and around Italy, the solo show at Crossing Arte Club in Portogruaro (Venice) and Illusione ottica at Futurarium in Milan, both in 2001, or the following year the exhibition/performance Hotel Madison room 666 with Alberto Biagetti and Luigi Berardi, at the Madison Hotel in Milan. On these occasions, various critics and art insiders monitoring developments in contemporary art closest to the pop sub-cultures (from Pop Surrealism to Lowbrow) have the opportunity to write about Bad Trip’s work: Matteo Guarnaccia, Carlo Branzaglia, Pablo Echaurren, Gianluca Marziani, Roberto Rossini, Boris Brollo, Olivia Cozzani, Luca Raffaelli, etc.

Maintaining a balanced connection with popular vintage culture which he is experienced in and passionate about, Lerici makes many of his paintings with vivid complementary colors that produce "lysergic" effects and illusions of depth, especially when seen through two-colored glasses used since the late 50s for viewing comics and 3D movies (sometimes, a pair of red/green glasses is fastened directly to the canvas with string). The paintings are sometimes joined together in diptychs, triptychs and multiple installations, also of considerable size (the anti-military triptych "Shoot Kill Shoot" for example measures 60x240 cm.).

The preferred themes are the same as those of his comics, illustrations and collages, but stylized and synthesized into powerful exemplary icons: symbols of the psychedelic tradition like eyes, skulls, hallucinogenic mushrooms, semi-human robots and other technological nightmares, demons and disturbing pagan deities, scary warmongers, rich capitalists and corrupt prelates, mutant freaks, gigantic anthropomorphic insects, alien creatures, etc. New themes appear over the years, often linked to an organic mixture of nature and technology: the depths of space crossed by meteors and spaceships, an aquarium inhabited by psychotic fishes and threatening rubbery plants, unusual floral shapes and magnified many-colored cells made by bizarre cloning processes.

In 2002, ten years after the debut book Naked Lunch, Mondadori publishes an anthology of comics and illustrations called Almanacco apocalittico in the “Oscar” series, with an interview with Professor Bad Trip signed by the "multi-individual" Luther Blissett. In the same year, at the Mondo Bizzarro Gallery in Bologna the Professor exhibits paintings and prints in a show called Psychedelic Solution. Meanwhile, between 1998 and 2000 the contemporary musician from Gorizia Fausto Romitelli (who died prematurely in 2004) composed one of his most representative works, the trilogy Professor Bad Trip inspired by Gianluca’s work. This is recorded and published on cd in 2003 by the Belgian ensemble Ictus, titled Professor Bad Trip on the Cypres label.

In the early years of the new millennium, as well as being active in drawing, painting and sculpture, Lerici engages with renewed enthusiasm also in a series of design projects for international exhibitions. He makes a "post-bomb" suit to dress a life-size dummy of himself as part of the collective exhibition Dressing Ourselves by Alessandro Guerriero for the Milan Triennale in 2005 (catalog by Charta), while in April 2006 he uses wall-paper with his own patterns to cover an entire room for the Remida exhibition at the Cernaia Gallery in Milan. A limited edition of handbags are then produced for Yoox, and other objects of design and furnishing (carpets, pillows, kimonos, printed fabrics, chairs, tables, lamps and furniture "decorated" in Bad Trip style).

In 2004, to increase this type of production, Gianluca and Jena start a studio-workshop in Bottagna, in the municipality of Vezzano Ligure, in the countryside near La Spezia, a project called “Gli Insoliti Ignoti” ("The Unusual Suspects"), an artistic collective that deals with "social libertarian art and recycling, low-tech productions and upcycling". The showroom is shared between the couple and Alessandro Donini and Andrea Berti. Paintings, sculptures, etchings, collages, t-shirts, furniture, psychedelic lamps and other objects are exhibited and often restored waste is adapted with decorations. The Insoliti Ignoti organize installations and video-parties in their studio in Bottagna, but they also supervise exhibitions and multimedia interventions in different situations, such as the underground art collective show called Intersezioni 2 at the Interzona social center of Verona in 2004 or the festival Estraneamente 2 at the Fortezza di Sarzanello (2005) and the group show Saluti dalla Costa Ovest at the C.S.O.A. Cox 18 in Milan (2005).

Since the early 80s, Gianluca enjoys doing murals in alternative spaces around Italy, one example is the large work at the entrance of Kronstadt, ex-school and first occupied social center of La Spezia. The artist’s best known mural, however, is the kaleidoscopic mosaic made right on the showroom ceiling of Insoliti Ignoti, called by many "the Sistine Chapel of the underground". The group's activities are announced in 2005 by the free newsletter “L’isola degli Ignoti”, and when the project ended, in 2006 it turned into the free micro-zine “L’Isola del Professore”. Between August and November 2006 seven issues were produced to inform about upcoming activities and the artist’s production in real time. The fourth issue contains a cut-out-and-dress character with a fancy "Artist's suit for psychic wars", while number 7 speaks of an exhibition still under preparation, Nexus, with androids heads painted as homage to P.K. Dick.

In 2005, Lerici won the prestigious Ciampi award in Livorno, "L’altrarte", signing among other things an evocative portrait of the singer and songwriter Piero Ciampi. Always very active locally, for the Osteria Fondachi in Sarzana only, between 2004 and 2005, he realizes over twenty spectacular posters for various concerts organized in the premises. In January 2006, the artist starts on the Greetings From Hell musical project, which involves the reciting of a mash-up of anarchic, pataphysic and neo-situationist texts by the Professor over electronic bases and "sick psychedelia " remixed by various DJs (M16, Christo and The Kingdom a.k.a. Emiliano Ponzanelli, Gianluca’s trust-worthy collaborator), with the addition of video clips made by V.J. Signorina Rottermeier (featuring animations with puppets and small robots created by Bad Trip dancing to techno music). The same year the Professor supervises a retrospective exhibition for the Cox 18 social center in Milan, attending the inauguration on November 15 and the presentation of the collective book Lumi di punk (Agenzia X) by Marco Philopat, in which he appears with an intense autobiographical text. The author also makes the artwork for Saluti dall’inferno, an original calendar for 2007 with the faces of various "damned" rock icons (in addition to those who have damned our lives, like G.W. Bush and Silvio Berlusconi), unfortunately the artist will not have the pleasure of admiring this publication in the flesh.

Gianluca Lerici dies of a heart attack on the 25th of November 2006, at the age of 43, leaving behind an unparalleled and boundless artistic production, a labyrinth-like mosaic of expressions in various media, with dazzling colors and explosive black and white optical contrasts, describing an end of contemporary civilization and its uncertain rebirth in new dystopian perspectives, revisiting visionary 60s culture but also classic themes of folk art with a social background. The flamboyant art of Prof. Bad Trip did not die that day, neither was closed the third eye that he carved in blood on three decades of conformism and cultural sluggishness.

To remember Gianluca, already widely considered one of the most important underground visual artists of the Italian and European scene in recent decades, in 2007 and 2008 two anthologies are compiled by Jenamarie Filaccio and ShaKe editions, L’arte del Prof. Bad Trip and I fumetti del Prof. Bad Trip, putting together a large and significant collection of the author’s art production and comics. In 2008, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art Manifesta 7 in Bolzano devotes a tribute to the artist, celebrating him as a leading figure of cyberpunk culture.

After the exhibition Ricordando Gianluca Lerici at Raisart Studio in May 2009, a "petition" that quickly collects hundreds of signatures leads to Prof. Bad Trip - La rivoluzione visuale di Gianluca Lerici, a show curated by Jenamarie Filaccio and Doriana Carlotti held from September 26th 2009 to January 24th 2010 at the Modern and Contemporary Art Center CAMeC of La Spezia, with a series of events and conferences that analyze the faceted career of Professor Bad Trip.

In the following years, several other exhibitions and tributes are held in La Spezia (at the Circolo Anarchico Binazzi in 2011, for example) and in other Italian cities (the Traffic Gallery in Bergamo between 2010 and 2011, the Galo Art Gallery in Turin between 2011 and 2012) and Europe (at Xlab Corrosive Art Farm in Berlin in 2010). In 2014 Lerici is seen for the first time in the South of Italy with the exhibition La musica disegnata di Gianluca Lerici - Professor Bad Trip at Palazzo Caputi in Ruvo di Puglia, organized by the cultural association La Mancha. With regard to music, in 2012 the New York label Tzadik released the posthumous album Anamorphosis by Fausto Romitelli (with Talea Ensemble), with Lerici’s Half Human painting on the cover. In 2014, vol. 24, n. 3 of Canadian contemporary music magazine "Circuit" is entirely dedicated to Romitelli and has illustrations by Prof. Bad Trip both on the cover and inside.

In January 2015 works by Lerici and Filaccio are exhibited together in Pietrasanta at Dovedesign gallery, in a show called Prof. Bad Trip & Good Jena. In early 2016, ten years after the artist's death, the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in La Spezia hosts the exhibition Professor Bad Trip's Illustrated World at Spazio 32. Among the events related to the show, the Teatro Civico of La Spezia hosts a tribute concert, with free admission, with Fausto Romitelli’s composition Professor Bad Trip performed by Eutopia Ensemble.