JAN FABRE – MASKERS
2017-10-02This project brings together some of Fabre’s sculptural work that explores the theme of self-portraits, both as a form of enquiry into human nature and as an attempt to represent and liberate the various personalities that make up a person’s identity.
When looking at ourselves in the mirror, do we really see ourselves? We may think we are able to seize our own image, but it’s not something we are truly able to do. The human body is in a constant state of transformation. The many faces we possess change inexorably over the course of time. Jan Fabre explores the elusiveness of “self” in his Chapters I-XVIII (2010) series of gilded bronze and wax statues – busts in which the artist portrays himself with the addition of animal attributes. The metamorphosis of man into animal and of animal into man is a key feature in all Fabre’s work. Here, in amongst the horns and ears from a multitude of species, the artist assembles a kind of anthropomorphic bestiary in which the perfection of anatomical details and a number of coloured elements conceal meanings that straddle the autobiographical and the symbolic.
Opposite – Chapter IV, 2010
Exhibition runs through to November 9th, 2017
MAGAZZINO
via dei Prefetti, 17
00186 Rome
Italy