The two statues in the corners of the room are part of ErmEstEtiche. These works are the fruit of cooperation with Davide Servadei’s studio, in Faenza, which has been a benchmark for the artist since 1990
Note the details of St. Sebastian: the mythological figures of the archers on the bust, while the redundant figures of the eye and the alder leaf on the shoulders are hallmarks of the artist’s visual art.
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The truly unique detail in this work is the arrow hitting a circle of colours, right at the level of the heart. This is an allegoric and pictorial image of the Christian history of St. Sebastian, with the holistic view of the artist’s “ego” giving the worship of the Saint a new lease of life. The saint morphs into what we could call “Art” and, as a martyr who dies for his faith, so art dies for the ideal. He comes before the mystifying but non-provocative vision of a space and a time that seek to preserve the separation between subject and object.
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The second ErmEstEtica is on the opposite side of the room. It represents Sganappino, the mask from Bologna created by puppet maker and dialect actor Augusto Galli in 1877. His name comes from “sganappar”, which means wolfing down food in the local dialect. He is fearful and naive, but cunning in a way, although not malicious, and he is big chums with Fagiolino.
The artist also included a tribute to Lucio Dalla, a singer and songwriter from Bologna, through various details: the golden record that is actually the halo; the hair is a tangible reminder of a wine fiasco, a typical type of wine bottle found in the taverns the singer so loved; the phallus is a clarinet, an instrument played by Dalla; finally, one of the feet is reminiscent of an animal paw, clearly suggesting the song “Attenti al Lupo” or “Beware of the Wolf” (see the “Lapsus Lupus” pose in the Opera e Intuito exhibition held in Rome and New York, which preceded the song). Even the singer’s birthplace is alluded to, with the typical red and blue colours of the sock and the tortellini pasta for buttons. Finally, as part of the artist’s specific desire to express the relationship between a unit and the whole, he decorates Sganappino with a brooch that is identical to the one in his tableau vivant Pinocchio. This is the perfect alibi work for an exhibition in Bologna in the Lucio Dalla gallery (a former recording studio). In the end, the ironic balance of the work lies in the combination of a “fiasco” and a “golden record”.