with Ivan Terranova
from an idea of Carmelo Nicosia
at Massimoligreggi in 2021, Catania, Italy
en
The photographic series this could be reproduces icons and symbols of Southern Italy, accidentally arranged objects, precarious in their transience, to which one could attribute a potential artistic quality. The exalted minimal elements distort the customary aspect to the advantage of the irrational one in a situationist-like dynamic of recuperation. Constantly balancing/unbalancing between two opposite geographical poles of origin, Sicily and Switzerland, the artist declares the provisional character of his art, clinging to a sort of philosophy of idiocy, which places him in a dimension of stylistic evanescence, even including images resized and retouched using the four-colour technique.
The strong powers of economics and consumerism subjugate culture and environmental ethics in Fabrice’s untitled, for the moment, polaroids.
In an ironic and paradoxical way, Fabrice composes a superimposition of commercial labels and views that evoke the theme of a trip to Italy with the aim of explicating the intellectual impoverishment to which contemporary society is heading. The bust of the moustachioed Moretti beer man in the foreground contrasts with the underlying background depicting the decapitated statue of Ferdinand I of Bourbon in front of Catania’s Palazzo Biscari, in a game of historical and historical-artistic references, just as the pizza chef’s chubby face invades the Faraglioni of Acicastello.
The anti-heroes series is intended to be a parody of traditional sculpture and the language with which we decode it. Composition, subject, material, dynamism, weight: all these terminologies clash with the mediocrity of the materials and with the title that strikes a sublime ridicule. The recurring theme of gravity becomes evident: the fraction of a second of precarious equilibrium before the objects collapse.
These objects, which lend themselves to a minimum of mechanical functioning, are based on fantasies and representations that can be provoked by the performance of unconscious acts. Acts of realization from which the pleasure derived can hardly be explained. In all the cases analysed, his acts correspond to fantasies and desires clearly defined as carnal. But the balance is particularly difficult when it comes to things and objects, because they are rebellious, imperturbable, idiotic.
The anti-heroes are there, impassive.