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イタリアのミラノで開催された SACRIFICE展に作品出展
CG
/ 美術
/ グラフィック
イタリアの M.A.D.S. ART GALLERYさんがミラノで開催した SACRIFICE展に作品を出展いたしました。非常に崇高な理念のもと開催される展示会に日本から参加させていただけたことを誇りに思います。この展示に訪れてくださった方々、これまで作品を見てくださった方々、全てが幸福に包まれるよう祈っています。
I will be exhibiting my graphic works at SACRIFICE exhibition held by M.A.D.S. ART GALLERY in Milan, Italy from December 16 to 23, 2021. I am proud to participate in this exhibition from Japan, which is based on a very noble idea. I wish all the visitors to this exhibition and all the people who have seen my works to be happy.
*
SACRIFICE 2021 - M.A.D.S. ART GALLERY
International Contemporary Art exhibition
December, 16 - 23 2021
https://dolice.design/sacrifice-2021-mads-art-gallery
M.A.D.S. ART GALLERY
https://www.madsgallery.art
*
Exhibited Works:
Avatar / 化身
Sep 2021 / 146 × 236 cm
私たちあらゆる生命は、この世に生を受ける前にその魂の歩む生涯を決めて来ました。全ての存在が神の化身であり、分け御霊であり、そして全ての命は平等です。本来は全知である存在ですが、私たちは魂の修練のためにこの三次元世界のルールに則って生きなければなりません。もしあなたが試練に直面したならこう思い出してください。あなたは神と等しく尊くかけがえのない存在です。
Before we are born into this world, all of our lives are determined by our soul's life path. Every being is an incarnation of God, a separate Spirit, and all life is equal. In truth, we are omniscient beings. But we have to live by the rules of this 3D world for the sake of our soul practice. If you are faced with a challenge, remember this, you are precious and irreplaceable.
--
Archetypus / 元型
Jul 2020 / 175 × 140 cm
この作品では「原型への回帰と反復」というテーマに沿って、鳥の仮面を被った女性を繰り返し複製しています。これは人間の持つ熾烈な願望を表現しています。狂気を支える論理がアート作品または人類の文明には必要不可欠であり、作家にとって論理は感覚を抑える手段に過ぎないため、両者の共存が合わせ鏡のような反復を生むことになります。そこには終焉がなく、ただ入れ子構造になった世界がループしているのみです。人類の歴史や文化、戦争、紛争、そして宇宙もこのようにして構築されて来たのではないでしょうか。
The work replicates a woman wearing a bird mask to convey the theme, "repetition and a return to archetypes," capturing the essence of humans living in society. Humans form orderly societies, as controlling chaos using law and order is a prerequisite for human civilization. The work depicts how the coexistence of chaos and order creates repetitions like those found in opposing mirrors. The mask represents a sociable personality and shows how human coexistence results in endless repetitions like those found in opposing mirrors.
--
Bodhisattvas of the Earth / 地涌の手
Mar 2020 / 97 x 138 cm
世界がコロナ禍に入った時、街中からあらゆる悲しい想念が流れ込んで来ました。神社からは柄杓がなくなり、スーパーの棚は空になりました。世界は新しく生まれ変わろうとしていました。アートがそのような世界で持つ役割は何か考え続け、大きな世界のうねりから受けた想念をろ過するように、無心で作品に投影し続けました。そして最後に残ったのは「祈り」でした。
When the world entered the Corona disaster, all sorts of sad thoughts poured in from all over the city. Ladles disappeared from shrines and supermarket shelves were emptied. The world was about to be reborn. I kept thinking about what role art could play in such a world, and I mindlessly projected the thoughts I received from the swell of the world into my work, as if filtering them. The last thing that remained was "prayer.
*
Introduction:
Masaki Hirokawa is a Japanese artist whose wide range of activities includes graphic design, smartphone app development, interactive movie production and website development. At “SACRIFICE” exhibition hosted by M.A.D.S. Art Gallery, Masaki presents three photo collages.
“Archetypus” replicates a woman wearing a bird mask to convey the theme, “repetition and a return to archetypes”, capturing the essence of humans living in society. Humans form orderly societies, as controlling chaos using law and order is a prerequisite for human civilization. The work depicts how the coexistence of chaos and order creates repetitions like those found in opposing mirrors. The mask represents a sociable personality and shows how human coexistence results in endless repetitions like those found in opposing mirrors”
“Avatar” shows two mirror-like women with dark skin covered in gold paint. With this work, Masaki wants to tell us that before we are born into this world, all of our lives are determined by our soul's life path. Every being is an incarnation of God, a separate Spirit, and all life is equal. In truth, we are omniscient beings. But we have to live by the rules of this 3D world for the sake of our soul practice. If you are faced with a challenge, remember this, you are precious and irreplaceable.
Lastly, “Bodhisattvas of the Earth” represents a woman completely covered in gold, wrapped in three pairs of hands that increase her mystery and royalty. Also in this case, the artist Masaki brings forward a reflection: when the world entered the Corona disaster, all sorts of sad thoughts poured in from all over the city, ladles disappeared from shrines and supermarket shelves were emptied. The world was about to be reborn. How could art help overcome this situation and what was its role in this kind of new world? The artist began to project all these thoughts into his work, charging it with power and energy, until he came to the conclusion that the last thing that remained was prayer - da qui, il riferimento alle celebri figure buddiste. And his beautiful works.
Edited by M. Matilde Della Pina
*
Exhibition concept (excerpt, Japanese translation):
人は何故、芸術作品を創ることに感動するのか。作品が自分自身の内面を静かに観察しているような印象を受けることがあるのは何故だろう。私たちは筆跡の中にエネルギーを感じ、キャンバスに敷き詰められたレリーフの間にエネルギーを感じる。作家の手とそのリズミカルな動きに神秘性を感じ、形ある素材の不透明な表面の後ろに隠されているものを伝えるためには常に自己犠牲が伴う。
犠牲。何かに、何かのために捧げる行為。現実の世界に言及可能なオブジェクトがその意味を失い、構成された形とその物質的な義務を放棄して、準親水性のオブジェクトと化す行為。本来の機能を失った物体は、不安定で見えない意味合いを持ち、見えない世界の可視的な物体となる。現実の次元と聖なる次元の狭間の微妙な繊維、人間と希望の間の豊かな絆の構築者、オブジェクトはそれ自体が犠牲となる。人間自身が犠牲者であると同時に、焼かれるべき要素でもある。
一方、自然界には犠牲の本能はなく、動物は道徳に突き動かされることもなく、倫理的なジレンマに陥ることもない。人間だけが、理想や未来の利益、微かな希望の名のもとに、自らを犠牲にすることを決断できる存在なのである。希望は犠牲の原動力なのだろうか？ 犠牲とは、無力で取るに足らない存在でありながら、手に入らないものを目指す人間の叫びなのだろうか。そしてそれは、犠牲になった者と犠牲にした者を、その中に具現化する芸術家の姿なのだろうか。
今日、美的表現は人間的な活動であり、実用性の規則に従わず、市場の厳格な法則にも無視され、実用性の如何なるものからも除外されている。芸術はその性質上、具体的な任務を果たさず、目に見えないもの、「異次元」から来るものの担い手となっている。具体的な要素を持たず、芸術的創造の言語によってのみ表現されるアートは、私たちが見ることのできないものを表現する唯一の方法である。アートを相反する世界を統合する準親和性のあるオブジェクトにまで高めることは可能なのだろうか。
フランス社会学の理論によれば、生け贄の行為は、個人が聖なる領域にアクセスするための現実の道具に他ならない。人間は超自然的な世界とコミュニケーションを取る特権を持っており、焼かれたものは犠牲者を異なる状態に移行させ、現実の世界から遠ざけ、神的な存在に近づけるものである。一方で、生け贄は人間の世界と目に見えない世界との間の自然な分離を制止する。人間は、橋のない空間、或いは時間を克服しようと、無意識的なジェスチャーや公式で作られた大規模な儀式を通し、「他」の世界とコミュニケーションを取ろうとする。運命の頂点としての芸術家、全人類の聖なるテーブルの上で焼き尽くされるべき行動と要素としての芸術。現代世界の司祭であり、現実の世界と不可視的な世界との狭間の繊細な道を構築する者である芸術家は、人類のために、その先天的な疑問や先祖代々の疑念を犠牲にした著者としての立場にある。芸術の血は、祭壇の横顔から豊かに降り注ぐ。それは全人類のための犠牲であり、贈り物である。
現代では、生贄の行為を神々に捧げられた行事と考えることは時代錯誤である。しかし、神々はまだ存在している。彼らは私たちの世界を歩き、呼吸し、停留している。神々はその名前と姿を失い、その解釈は新しいものへと変化している。それは、私たちの生き方や、速くてあまり瞑想的ではない同時代性に特有の理想や願望である。理想の中の神々の化身、目に見えないものの領域に人間の疑問を含めること、そして世界で未踏のものを解剖したいという不変の欲求は、人間である芸術家に、自分自身の神的な概念に到達するために、繊細な創造のプロセスを通して自らの存在を犠牲とし、物理的な法則を超えて神的なものに流れ込む存在の状態へと向かわせる。
SACRIFICE展は、人間の発明品としての犠牲について考える行為であり、絵画、彫刻、デジタルの媒体を用いて、人間に向けられた死の衝動を生み出すもの、決定するものを明るみに出すための親密な研究の機会を提供する。SACRIFICE展は、上記のような疑問に対する答えを導き出し、原動力としての希望の価値を検証する機会であり、私たち一人一人の魂に宿る、決して衰えることのない旺盛な願望と理想を明らかにするためのインプットでもある。疑念、生来の謎、現代社会特有の特異性、身体の皮下に宿る脆さなど、全てが芸術作品の中にあり、私たちの中に宿る暗い深淵を解読するための奉納物である。アートを私たちの犠牲となる要素に似せて形作り、その目に見える特徴を消し、表面的な形式的要素を取り除き、物質世界と観念世界の間にある繊細で幽玄な橋を築こう。そしてアートを私たちの準親水性の対象とし、人類の希望と神秘的な願望のために捧げようではないか。
Translated by Masaki Hirokawa
*
Exhibition concept:
Why are we moved to create art? Why do we sometimes get the impression that an artwork is silently observing the inside of ourselves? We perceive energy within the brushstrokes, between the reliefs determined by the color lying on the canvas. We sense mystery in the artist's hand and in his rhythmic gestures. There is self-sacrifice to tell what is hidden behind the opaque surface of the shaped material.
Sacrifice. A gesture of offering to something, for something. Action through which an object referable to the world of reality loses its meaning, gives up its constituent form and its materialistic duties to become a semiophore object. Stripped of its native function, the entity in question acquires labile and invisible connotations, becoming a visible object of an invisible world. Delicate fiber between the dimension of the real and that of the sacred; builder of a prosperous bond between man and hope, the object is itself the sacrifice. The human being himself can be a sacrificer and, at the same time, an element to be immolated. On the other hand, in nature there is no instinct of sacrifice, animals are not driven by a moral and do not undergo ethical dilemmas. The human being is the only entity that can decide to sacrifice itself - and make sacrifices - in the name of an ideal, of a future benefit, of a hint of hope. Is hope perhaps the driving force behind sacrifice? Is sacrifice perhaps the cry of the human being who, powerless and insignificant, aspires to something unattainable? And is it perhaps the figure of the artist who embodies in his robes the sacrificed and the sacrificer? Nowadays the aesthetic expression is an activity - exquisitely human - that is not subject to the rule of utility, does not respond to the strict laws of the market and is excluded from any dynamic of practical utility. By its nature, Art, not fulfilling concrete specific tasks, becomes the bearer of the invisible, of something coming from the "other dimension". Devoid of tangible elements and expressible exclusively through the language of artistic creation, Art is the only mode of expression of what we are unable to see. Is it therefore possible to raise art to a semiophore object unifying opposing worlds?
According to the theory of French sociology, the act of sacrifice is nothing but an instrument of the real through which the individual has access to the sacral sphere. Finally, man has the privilege of entering into communication with the supernatural world and the immolated element allows the sacrificer to pass to a different condition, to something that distances him from the world of the real to bring him closer to the divine entity. On the other hand, the sacrifice simultaneously sanctions the natural separation between the world of men and the world of the invisible. Men try to communicate with the "other" world through a prodigious ritual, made of atavistic gestures and formulas, trying to overcome an unbridgeable space - or time -. The artist as the haruspex of destiny, Art as action and element to be immolated on the sacred table of all humanity. Priest of the contemporary world, the one who builds the delicate way between the world of the real and that of the invisible, the artist stands as the author of the sacrifice on behalf of humanity, of its atavistic questions and its ancestral doubts. The blood of the Art descends abundantly from the profiles of the altar, it is sacrifice and gift for the whole humanity.
Nowadays it is rather anachronistic to consider the act of sacrifice as an event dedicated to God or to the Gods. Yet, the latter still exist. They walk, breathe and station in our world. They have lost their names and their physiognomies: their connotations have changed into something new: into ideals and aspirations peculiar to our way of life, to our fast - and not very meditative - contemporaneity. The incarnation of the Gods in ideals, the inclusion of man's questions in the sphere of the invisible and the immutable desire to dissect what is unexplored in the world, pushes the man-artist to sacrifice his being through the delicate creative process in order to reach a divinatory conception of himself, to a condition of existence that goes beyond physical laws to flow into the divine.
M.A.D.S. with Sacrifice presents itself as an act of reflection on sacrifice as an entirely human invention; an occasion for an intimate study through the medium of painting, sculpture and digital to bring to light what feeds and determines the impulse of immolation towards humanity. Sacrifice is a chance to formulate an answer to the questions outlined above, it is an opportunity to examine the value of hope as a driving force, it is an input to reveal the vigorous aspirations and ideals that never lapsed and that dwell in the soul of each of us. The doubts, the innate mysteries, the idiosyncrasies peculiar to the contemporary world, the fragilities that reside under the skin of our body are all there, in the work of art, votive object to decipher the dark abyss that dwells within us. Let's take Art and shape it in the likeness of our sacrificial element, eradicating its visible features and removing the superficial formal patina. Let's build little by little, spot of color on spot of color that delicate and ethereal bridge between the world of things and the world of ideas, let's approach laboriously to the divine tasting the sweet taste of hope. Let's make Art our semiophore object and put matter at the service of that impalpable and longed-for desire for hope and mystical knowledge.
Concept edited by Art Curator Lisa Galletti
I will be exhibiting my graphic works at SACRIFICE exhibition held by M.A.D.S. ART GALLERY in Milan, Italy from December 16 to 23, 2021. I am proud to participate in this exhibition from Japan, which is based on a very noble idea. I wish all the visitors to this exhibition and all the people who have seen my works to be happy.
*
SACRIFICE 2021 - M.A.D.S. ART GALLERY
International Contemporary Art exhibition
December, 16 - 23 2021
https://dolice.design/sacrifice-2021-mads-art-gallery
M.A.D.S. ART GALLERY
https://www.madsgallery.art
*
Exhibited Works:
Avatar / 化身
Sep 2021 / 146 × 236 cm
私たちあらゆる生命は、この世に生を受ける前にその魂の歩む生涯を決めて来ました。全ての存在が神の化身であり、分け御霊であり、そして全ての命は平等です。本来は全知である存在ですが、私たちは魂の修練のためにこの三次元世界のルールに則って生きなければなりません。もしあなたが試練に直面したならこう思い出してください。あなたは神と等しく尊くかけがえのない存在です。
Before we are born into this world, all of our lives are determined by our soul's life path. Every being is an incarnation of God, a separate Spirit, and all life is equal. In truth, we are omniscient beings. But we have to live by the rules of this 3D world for the sake of our soul practice. If you are faced with a challenge, remember this, you are precious and irreplaceable.
--
Archetypus / 元型
Jul 2020 / 175 × 140 cm
この作品では「原型への回帰と反復」というテーマに沿って、鳥の仮面を被った女性を繰り返し複製しています。これは人間の持つ熾烈な願望を表現しています。狂気を支える論理がアート作品または人類の文明には必要不可欠であり、作家にとって論理は感覚を抑える手段に過ぎないため、両者の共存が合わせ鏡のような反復を生むことになります。そこには終焉がなく、ただ入れ子構造になった世界がループしているのみです。人類の歴史や文化、戦争、紛争、そして宇宙もこのようにして構築されて来たのではないでしょうか。
The work replicates a woman wearing a bird mask to convey the theme, "repetition and a return to archetypes," capturing the essence of humans living in society. Humans form orderly societies, as controlling chaos using law and order is a prerequisite for human civilization. The work depicts how the coexistence of chaos and order creates repetitions like those found in opposing mirrors. The mask represents a sociable personality and shows how human coexistence results in endless repetitions like those found in opposing mirrors.
--
Bodhisattvas of the Earth / 地涌の手
Mar 2020 / 97 x 138 cm
世界がコロナ禍に入った時、街中からあらゆる悲しい想念が流れ込んで来ました。神社からは柄杓がなくなり、スーパーの棚は空になりました。世界は新しく生まれ変わろうとしていました。アートがそのような世界で持つ役割は何か考え続け、大きな世界のうねりから受けた想念をろ過するように、無心で作品に投影し続けました。そして最後に残ったのは「祈り」でした。
When the world entered the Corona disaster, all sorts of sad thoughts poured in from all over the city. Ladles disappeared from shrines and supermarket shelves were emptied. The world was about to be reborn. I kept thinking about what role art could play in such a world, and I mindlessly projected the thoughts I received from the swell of the world into my work, as if filtering them. The last thing that remained was "prayer.
*
Introduction:
Masaki Hirokawa is a Japanese artist whose wide range of activities includes graphic design, smartphone app development, interactive movie production and website development. At “SACRIFICE” exhibition hosted by M.A.D.S. Art Gallery, Masaki presents three photo collages.
“Archetypus” replicates a woman wearing a bird mask to convey the theme, “repetition and a return to archetypes”, capturing the essence of humans living in society. Humans form orderly societies, as controlling chaos using law and order is a prerequisite for human civilization. The work depicts how the coexistence of chaos and order creates repetitions like those found in opposing mirrors. The mask represents a sociable personality and shows how human coexistence results in endless repetitions like those found in opposing mirrors”
“Avatar” shows two mirror-like women with dark skin covered in gold paint. With this work, Masaki wants to tell us that before we are born into this world, all of our lives are determined by our soul's life path. Every being is an incarnation of God, a separate Spirit, and all life is equal. In truth, we are omniscient beings. But we have to live by the rules of this 3D world for the sake of our soul practice. If you are faced with a challenge, remember this, you are precious and irreplaceable.
Lastly, “Bodhisattvas of the Earth” represents a woman completely covered in gold, wrapped in three pairs of hands that increase her mystery and royalty. Also in this case, the artist Masaki brings forward a reflection: when the world entered the Corona disaster, all sorts of sad thoughts poured in from all over the city, ladles disappeared from shrines and supermarket shelves were emptied. The world was about to be reborn. How could art help overcome this situation and what was its role in this kind of new world? The artist began to project all these thoughts into his work, charging it with power and energy, until he came to the conclusion that the last thing that remained was prayer - da qui, il riferimento alle celebri figure buddiste. And his beautiful works.
Edited by M. Matilde Della Pina
*
Exhibition concept (excerpt, Japanese translation):
人は何故、芸術作品を創ることに感動するのか。作品が自分自身の内面を静かに観察しているような印象を受けることがあるのは何故だろう。私たちは筆跡の中にエネルギーを感じ、キャンバスに敷き詰められたレリーフの間にエネルギーを感じる。作家の手とそのリズミカルな動きに神秘性を感じ、形ある素材の不透明な表面の後ろに隠されているものを伝えるためには常に自己犠牲が伴う。
犠牲。何かに、何かのために捧げる行為。現実の世界に言及可能なオブジェクトがその意味を失い、構成された形とその物質的な義務を放棄して、準親水性のオブジェクトと化す行為。本来の機能を失った物体は、不安定で見えない意味合いを持ち、見えない世界の可視的な物体となる。現実の次元と聖なる次元の狭間の微妙な繊維、人間と希望の間の豊かな絆の構築者、オブジェクトはそれ自体が犠牲となる。人間自身が犠牲者であると同時に、焼かれるべき要素でもある。
一方、自然界には犠牲の本能はなく、動物は道徳に突き動かされることもなく、倫理的なジレンマに陥ることもない。人間だけが、理想や未来の利益、微かな希望の名のもとに、自らを犠牲にすることを決断できる存在なのである。希望は犠牲の原動力なのだろうか？ 犠牲とは、無力で取るに足らない存在でありながら、手に入らないものを目指す人間の叫びなのだろうか。そしてそれは、犠牲になった者と犠牲にした者を、その中に具現化する芸術家の姿なのだろうか。
今日、美的表現は人間的な活動であり、実用性の規則に従わず、市場の厳格な法則にも無視され、実用性の如何なるものからも除外されている。芸術はその性質上、具体的な任務を果たさず、目に見えないもの、「異次元」から来るものの担い手となっている。具体的な要素を持たず、芸術的創造の言語によってのみ表現されるアートは、私たちが見ることのできないものを表現する唯一の方法である。アートを相反する世界を統合する準親和性のあるオブジェクトにまで高めることは可能なのだろうか。
フランス社会学の理論によれば、生け贄の行為は、個人が聖なる領域にアクセスするための現実の道具に他ならない。人間は超自然的な世界とコミュニケーションを取る特権を持っており、焼かれたものは犠牲者を異なる状態に移行させ、現実の世界から遠ざけ、神的な存在に近づけるものである。一方で、生け贄は人間の世界と目に見えない世界との間の自然な分離を制止する。人間は、橋のない空間、或いは時間を克服しようと、無意識的なジェスチャーや公式で作られた大規模な儀式を通し、「他」の世界とコミュニケーションを取ろうとする。運命の頂点としての芸術家、全人類の聖なるテーブルの上で焼き尽くされるべき行動と要素としての芸術。現代世界の司祭であり、現実の世界と不可視的な世界との狭間の繊細な道を構築する者である芸術家は、人類のために、その先天的な疑問や先祖代々の疑念を犠牲にした著者としての立場にある。芸術の血は、祭壇の横顔から豊かに降り注ぐ。それは全人類のための犠牲であり、贈り物である。
現代では、生贄の行為を神々に捧げられた行事と考えることは時代錯誤である。しかし、神々はまだ存在している。彼らは私たちの世界を歩き、呼吸し、停留している。神々はその名前と姿を失い、その解釈は新しいものへと変化している。それは、私たちの生き方や、速くてあまり瞑想的ではない同時代性に特有の理想や願望である。理想の中の神々の化身、目に見えないものの領域に人間の疑問を含めること、そして世界で未踏のものを解剖したいという不変の欲求は、人間である芸術家に、自分自身の神的な概念に到達するために、繊細な創造のプロセスを通して自らの存在を犠牲とし、物理的な法則を超えて神的なものに流れ込む存在の状態へと向かわせる。
SACRIFICE展は、人間の発明品としての犠牲について考える行為であり、絵画、彫刻、デジタルの媒体を用いて、人間に向けられた死の衝動を生み出すもの、決定するものを明るみに出すための親密な研究の機会を提供する。SACRIFICE展は、上記のような疑問に対する答えを導き出し、原動力としての希望の価値を検証する機会であり、私たち一人一人の魂に宿る、決して衰えることのない旺盛な願望と理想を明らかにするためのインプットでもある。疑念、生来の謎、現代社会特有の特異性、身体の皮下に宿る脆さなど、全てが芸術作品の中にあり、私たちの中に宿る暗い深淵を解読するための奉納物である。アートを私たちの犠牲となる要素に似せて形作り、その目に見える特徴を消し、表面的な形式的要素を取り除き、物質世界と観念世界の間にある繊細で幽玄な橋を築こう。そしてアートを私たちの準親水性の対象とし、人類の希望と神秘的な願望のために捧げようではないか。
Translated by Masaki Hirokawa
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Exhibition concept:
Why are we moved to create art? Why do we sometimes get the impression that an artwork is silently observing the inside of ourselves? We perceive energy within the brushstrokes, between the reliefs determined by the color lying on the canvas. We sense mystery in the artist's hand and in his rhythmic gestures. There is self-sacrifice to tell what is hidden behind the opaque surface of the shaped material.
Sacrifice. A gesture of offering to something, for something. Action through which an object referable to the world of reality loses its meaning, gives up its constituent form and its materialistic duties to become a semiophore object. Stripped of its native function, the entity in question acquires labile and invisible connotations, becoming a visible object of an invisible world. Delicate fiber between the dimension of the real and that of the sacred; builder of a prosperous bond between man and hope, the object is itself the sacrifice. The human being himself can be a sacrificer and, at the same time, an element to be immolated. On the other hand, in nature there is no instinct of sacrifice, animals are not driven by a moral and do not undergo ethical dilemmas. The human being is the only entity that can decide to sacrifice itself - and make sacrifices - in the name of an ideal, of a future benefit, of a hint of hope. Is hope perhaps the driving force behind sacrifice? Is sacrifice perhaps the cry of the human being who, powerless and insignificant, aspires to something unattainable? And is it perhaps the figure of the artist who embodies in his robes the sacrificed and the sacrificer? Nowadays the aesthetic expression is an activity - exquisitely human - that is not subject to the rule of utility, does not respond to the strict laws of the market and is excluded from any dynamic of practical utility. By its nature, Art, not fulfilling concrete specific tasks, becomes the bearer of the invisible, of something coming from the "other dimension". Devoid of tangible elements and expressible exclusively through the language of artistic creation, Art is the only mode of expression of what we are unable to see. Is it therefore possible to raise art to a semiophore object unifying opposing worlds?
According to the theory of French sociology, the act of sacrifice is nothing but an instrument of the real through which the individual has access to the sacral sphere. Finally, man has the privilege of entering into communication with the supernatural world and the immolated element allows the sacrificer to pass to a different condition, to something that distances him from the world of the real to bring him closer to the divine entity. On the other hand, the sacrifice simultaneously sanctions the natural separation between the world of men and the world of the invisible. Men try to communicate with the "other" world through a prodigious ritual, made of atavistic gestures and formulas, trying to overcome an unbridgeable space - or time -. The artist as the haruspex of destiny, Art as action and element to be immolated on the sacred table of all humanity. Priest of the contemporary world, the one who builds the delicate way between the world of the real and that of the invisible, the artist stands as the author of the sacrifice on behalf of humanity, of its atavistic questions and its ancestral doubts. The blood of the Art descends abundantly from the profiles of the altar, it is sacrifice and gift for the whole humanity.
Nowadays it is rather anachronistic to consider the act of sacrifice as an event dedicated to God or to the Gods. Yet, the latter still exist. They walk, breathe and station in our world. They have lost their names and their physiognomies: their connotations have changed into something new: into ideals and aspirations peculiar to our way of life, to our fast - and not very meditative - contemporaneity. The incarnation of the Gods in ideals, the inclusion of man's questions in the sphere of the invisible and the immutable desire to dissect what is unexplored in the world, pushes the man-artist to sacrifice his being through the delicate creative process in order to reach a divinatory conception of himself, to a condition of existence that goes beyond physical laws to flow into the divine.
M.A.D.S. with Sacrifice presents itself as an act of reflection on sacrifice as an entirely human invention; an occasion for an intimate study through the medium of painting, sculpture and digital to bring to light what feeds and determines the impulse of immolation towards humanity. Sacrifice is a chance to formulate an answer to the questions outlined above, it is an opportunity to examine the value of hope as a driving force, it is an input to reveal the vigorous aspirations and ideals that never lapsed and that dwell in the soul of each of us. The doubts, the innate mysteries, the idiosyncrasies peculiar to the contemporary world, the fragilities that reside under the skin of our body are all there, in the work of art, votive object to decipher the dark abyss that dwells within us. Let's take Art and shape it in the likeness of our sacrificial element, eradicating its visible features and removing the superficial formal patina. Let's build little by little, spot of color on spot of color that delicate and ethereal bridge between the world of things and the world of ideas, let's approach laboriously to the divine tasting the sweet taste of hope. Let's make Art our semiophore object and put matter at the service of that impalpable and longed-for desire for hope and mystical knowledge.
Concept edited by Art Curator Lisa Galletti
