The limit of love is always needing an accomplice.
-Pier Paolo Pasolini Interview the filming ‘Salò
Accomplice Series
The fact that the body becomes merchandise. My film is planned as a sexual metaphor, which symbolises, in a visionary way, the relationship between the exploiter and exploited. In sadism and in power politics human beings become objects. That similarity is the ideological basis of the film.
Pier Paolo Pasolini - Interview during the Filming of ‘Salo
Accomplice is a corpus of paintings produced on linen canvas with egg tempera, each of them measuring approximately 100 x 100 cm.
The project was created in the winter of 2021 during the lockdown, throughout the viewing of the entire filmography of the artist and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini. Drawn blindly while watching the latest film -120 Days of Sodom- 5 paintings have come to life.
The essential feature of these paintings is given by the contrast between the softness of the bodies and the geometric lines of the architectural structures. The geometries are reminiscent of fascist architecture and deliberately designed to resemble theatrical sets while emphasizing the inconsistency of the social structures that determine the lives of many people.
Reliquary Series
First of twenty four - 2020
Second of twenty four - 2020
Third twenty-four - 2020
Fourth twenty-four - 2020
Fifth twenty-four - 2020
Sixth twenty-four - 2020
Seventh twenty-four - 2020
Eightht twenty-four - 2020
Nineth twenty-four - 2020
Eleventh twenty-four - 2020
Twelveth twenty-four - 2020
Thierdteenth twenty-four - 2021
Fourteen twenty - 2021
Fiveteenth twenty-four - 2021
Seventeenth twenty-four - 2021
Eighteenthtwenty-four - 2021
Nineteenth twenty-four - 2021
Twentyth twenty-four - 2021
Twentyfirst twenty-four - 2021
Reliquary is a corpus of 24 paintings produced on linen canvas with egg tempera. The canvas fabric refers to something ancient and contemporary, egg tempera intends to be a common thread between the past and the present. In deciding to eliminate the frame and hold the piece between two slabs of glass, the canvas was meant I made as a shroud-relic. The canvases are meant to work either individually, in groups or in pairs, as they communicate with each other. The work as a whole is meant to be seen as succession, and portray the presence of these bodies locked within the arches, they resemble the idea of the nave in a church with its minor altars.
This body of work emerges from reflection on individual potential and the inability of precise consideration prevented to make it blossom. This reflection visually translates the impediment into an arch, the arch is taken into consideration as an architectural object with a precise historical and social connotation. It also suggests, the inevitability of being part of a larger architectural structure, but the building that would be part of the arch does not exist in the canvases, it exists only as an idea for the subjects represented. The export of the building suggests that the casualties that prevented the individual's fulfilment may have been more precarious and illusory than the man or woman involved could imagine or see from within the situation. It opens up the possibility that the causes that prevented them from asserting themselves were not insurmountable or that they may have been created by themselves.
Ashes Series
Ashes I
Ashes II
Ashes is a series of paintings made in oil colour on linen, it is born after a study on centuries-old olive trees, in Salento (Apulia, Italy). These trees used to grow in south-east Italy for centuries, through history they remained unchanged, always green. Their characteristic and monumental form as living sculptures was the result of a perfect connection between humans and nature. Since 2010 a bacterium started to slowly choke all of them to death, and now, looking from the hills, as far as the eye could, the land is just grey, like ash. This series of paintings was born from the studies of these trees and it is developed on the study of the Fibonacci sequence, and the similarity between the human brain and dark matter.
The Portraits Series
The Queen
“
Iconography of the spirit of contemporary human.
A scratched and suffered humanity becomes color, research and a voice. It is a dance of anthropomorphic and painful geometries, sexual and pristine.
An obedient and disjointed chastity of colors that rest delicately on rough jute canvases. Free from the prisons of frames or fabrics. The figures almost try to escape in a sprawling dance of chromatic engravings.
Streaking the soul of the spectator, with abrazing carves that scream, Michela.
The figure is broken down into lines and splinters of light. A harmonious and poignant decomposition that brings with it the power of Pierpaolo Pasolini and the geometrically bristly vocal cadences of Carmelo Bene.
Unconventional and enveloping, Michele’s work captivates, disturbs, inhibits and involves.”