Starting
from the literature of the twentieth century and in particular from the book
The music of the world or the Montoliu effect by the Spanish writer Andrés
Ibáñez and in the desire to link it with postmodern art, I have been interested
in developing plastically the concept of the self as a subject: is just a historical
construction that owns to the western culture, in the manner of great
paintings, sculptures, cathedrals, symphonies, novels. In other words, the
personal biography equals to the creation of a work of art. The implications of
this assumption lead me, like the protagonist of the book, to analyse this
fictional structure, decompose it, criticize it. The book is based on the the understanding
of the West as a logocentric civilization, which is opposed to that other that
is the East, that other world that from the West has been interpreted and
constructed as an antagonist in many of its concepts about the world, its
values and life. So my interest was to unity this two opposite worlds. To know
the art of West is to understand the West itself. Taking that as a starting
point, I have quickly looked at the world of circuses, understanding it as a
concept that moves away from that logocentric character and is always halfway
between East and West, and therefore has the capacity “to move”, transmute, and
choose a direction without forgetting to get lost since his own nature guides
them. Also, the world of the traveling circus, with its colourful and enigmatic
background, represents the perfect nest to host such different themes, as
athleticism and the taboos that surround it, multicultural integration, the
man-animal relationship, but also child exploitation and generational pain, which
I developed in the project entitled Into
the woods. Wishing to integrate the West with the East I have decided to use
aesthetic resources of both. Looking for a new iconography, I have superimposed a certain hieratic, characteristic of
orthodox icons, mixed with poses of yogi practices to the intrepid movement
typical of circus acrobats, using the vivid colour of the masterpieces
Renaissance, and the dynamism leaving it exclusively for the brushstroke,
recalling the painting of Velazquez or Rubens.
