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The installation depicts a new series of works: some glazed ceramics, "Abetardas", 2021, a wall-painted Saint Sebastian, an original hand-written letter by Jean Cocteau, and lastly a triad of words (ANONYMOUS / colpito / EROTIC) that hit the process.

 

In "Abetardas" ceramics, the artist mixes figurative and abstract drawings as narrative fragments on the pieces that pretend to be artefacts, erotic objects, and memorabilia.

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The largest piece is the bust of the French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, which has, drawn on its back (or inside his head), two characters identified as Raymond Radiguet and Édouard Dermit, central figures in the artist's creative and homo-affective life. The drawings are also accompanied by loose inscriptions such as phrases, years, and symbols, in order to build a small labyrinth with biographical inscriptions that are not always decipherable. In another piece, there is a face drawn next to the phrase “Il sole in faccia”, the title of a book about the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh, another character who also reappears in other ceramic pieces.

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The mixture of references suggests a set of vases that borrow from the classical mythological representation on amphorae – a porous world, permeated by imaginations, memories, and anecdotes, dealing with desire, eroticism, classicism, the contemporary, the tragic, and the romantic.

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Finally, the works are inserted within the artist’s practice as a pulsating pictorial expansion of recurring themes in his work, homoeroticism, and references to literature.

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> Jean Cocteau's letter translated in English:

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Dear Sir,

 

Since Rimbaud, poetry has taken off. The vocable is no more a consequence of the idea, but the idea comes from the vocable. Éluard had his own flute sound – the whisper of a source. Do not go further.

A poem must not be understood – it has to be felt – just like the mysteries of nature which amaze us and which are not made to amaze – but whose real necessity escapes us.

 

Yours.

Jean Cocteau

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INFO

ANONYMOUS colpito EROTIC - Matheus Chiaratti

Works produced during the residency at Viafarini-in-Residence

September, 1st – December, 15th

Photos by Emanuele Sosio Galante