These works (the two Rapes by Giambologna and by Bernini) follow from what is stated in the portfolio, and however they focus on a precise iconic aspect and in this case on an explicit iconographic reference. The description is the same for both works.
These works see the body as their main object. The body as something shaped by culture, that is by the manipulation of nature, and therefore by a code. We can quote De Certeau: "Where, in fact, and when ever, is there anything about the body that is not written, reshaped, cultivated [...]?
These works deal with codification as an act of cold violence and not as something sensational with respect to that of the Rape (the real one), and they bring back representation (not art in general) to this cold violence.
Moreover, we can find in these works social and psychological associations with power: the one represented in the Rape, and also the one linked to the racial theme (Rape by Giambologna).
In these works, a first codification of the image (a true and proper discretization) is presented by the casing in frames of vegetable forms and, in Giambologna's Rape, also of an Afro-American trumpet player. The latter intervenes at different levels of image in the representation of the Rape.
In this way, the codification that, referring to vegetable forms, was meant to be cultural, violently (coldly) interferes with the representation, making explicit its two-dimensionality and therefore its own codification in relation to the body (although not so discreet and arbitrary [iconic sign]).
Among the shifts in the levels of the image we can point out the virtual continuation of the profile of the legs in Bernini's Rape.
This point can also be useful in the observation of other works of mine.
In fact, in my overall activity as a painter, vegetable forms are always manipulated, abstract and codified despite the reference to nature. It can also happen, as in Blade of grass (portfolio page 10), that we show the pictorial process underlying the vegetal form as an unmanipulated part of the figuration.
Another remarkable aspect is represented by the different material levels of these works, which maintain the memory of the layers below due to material waste - in my work the operational memory is important and the description of my other proposal Untitled (figure-drapery/vegetal) can be very clear in this regard.
In this case, however, memory plays a more important role, because it fits in and dialogues with the theme of the quotation and therefore with the power and authority within the culture. For the Rape by Giambologna, I have written a semi-poetic text made only of quotations, which is available only in Italian and present as is inserted an image in the card of the work.
