2009 statment.
DK (the catalographic record of the Diabolik comic strips) is a work in progress which exploits the excuse of the art work’s aura in those places that are traditionally devoted to its physical preservation (museums, books), making them collide with the Thief imaginary.
The DK project developes through sculpture and performance, video and photography, putting Antonio Canova’s sculptures in connection with Diabolik, the famous comic strips’ thief.
A crazy matching for a funny non-material antagonism, between masking and crime play, which covers different intepretative keys: connotation, iconism, design, theft, intrusion, seriality, masterpiece.
A showcase displays some rents consisting in printed pages torn from catalogues about Canova’s sculptures. The traces of the furtive tear are evident and their origin can be clearly seen through the glass.
The action of removing pages from some libraries’s stock is portrayed in some videos included in the exhibition.
Six photographs reproducing Diabolik in its typical dynamic attitudes are put in a striking comparison with Canova’s works conserved in Italian museums (The Repentant Mary Magdalene, Terpsichore, Hebe, Napoleon’s consort Maria Louise as Concord, Leopoldo Cicognara): plastic and dynamic fights, black signs that challenge marble icons through strokes made with style.
The removing of a page from a book stands for the spoiling not only of a well established knowledge tool’s sacredness, but also of the functional aspect of an object, exactly the same way as stealing the museum’s aura is an excuse to change its educational approach. In both cases, a leak in these two spaces is emphasized.