Page 89 - FANTASTIC COSMOS SHOW CATALOGUE
P. 89
Irene Biolchini on Memento Mori by Alberto Favaro
Radioviolenza recounts the day of an of digital programs, but recovering the
ultrà: it recovers the ritual, reveals be- cut, the engraving of the original in
longing to the group, overturns - or re- daily practice. The “concrete contradi-
covers - the idea of tribe. ction” that drives the ideals of Fantastic
Similarly, Favaro does not quote Hol- Cosmos lives on in Favaro’s work, in his
bein in a postmodern pastiche, but ap- practice and in his reading of society.
propriates it, restoring the political and A perspective not romantically linked
satirical sense of the Dance of Death. In to the Mediterranean island where he
the 2016 print, edited by Ulinka Rublack , has chosen to live, but an act of denun-
6
it is she who highlights the social criti- ciation of the most controversial cha-
cism that nourishes the cycle, a syste- racters of Europe, which in Malta find
matic denunciation of the greed of the a concrete daily manifestation: the sale
powerful. The device used by Holbein of passports, tax evasion, gambling and
is the representation of the fantastic border defence. European history, on
through the systematic insertion of which we have built a rhetoric of in-
everyday elements. In Alberto Favaro’s clusion that clashes with the continual
work, it is the concrete datum of the rejection of immigration issues, is the
commercial object that is the driving backdrop to privilege: the walls of the
force behind the representation: pro- knights - an instrument of defence and
motional magazines for luxury homes control - are a stage set for the new lu-
and domestic objects are the starting xury, for modernity still summed up in
point for an overturning of the repre- the car and the aeroplane of futurist
sentation of reality. Luxury for the few, memory. Against this reality the only
in building speculation with a seafa- possible revolution is the enactment
ring view, is delivered into the homes of the creative exercise, a response to
of islanders by proposing the accessibi- intellectual death. Only by celebrating
lity of the exclusive. So the most elite death do we recover the value of the
penthouse is presented in glossy tones, active exercise of critical life.
in views that suggest possession of Val-
letta’s ancient port. The inhabitants of
this privilege, today as yesterday, are
Holbein’s potentates: silhouettes that
declare their origin from a black and
white past. Alberto Favaro recovers
these figures, patiently cuts them out
and - thanks to his past as an archi-
tect - rearranges them as figures in a 6 Hans Holbein, The Dance of the Death,
hypothetical rendering. The manual act curated by Ulinka Rublack, 2016, Lon-
of collage extends the time but obliges don, Penguin.
the author to have physical contact
with the page, with the dimensions
of the figures, with the perspective. A
continuous calibration of full and emp-
ty spaces, renouncing the automation
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