Padua Fair

Padua Fair

.. I met Claudio on several occasions, first at the Padua Fair, then at the stand of the Anfiteatro Arte Gallery, in Milan, on the night of the opening of the exhibition “Zecca clandestina” (Clandestine Mint). I liked the exhibition very much: I had the sensation of entering an endless series of labyrinths, where references, symbols and suggestions lead you to never-ending discoveries, memories and dreams.

Some works evoked the fantastic and illusory architectures of Maurits Cornelis Escher.

Maps that guide you to another world, where you can find a corner you’ve already seen, a familiar face, domesticated animals, a perspective that struck you who knows where and when, an unlikely world map in which you see the Earth deformed.

After the first, immediate impression of amusement, we realize that Claudio’s ironic and refined game is not so reassuring and forces you to think: houses invaded by insects and strange animals, streets and skies filled with human beings and not only that. Perhaps aren’t the skyscrapers besieged by confused multitudes the deforming mirror that metaphorically (but not too much) reflects our everyday life, our world now devoid of certainties?

We welcome Onorato’s warning as if it were Ariadne’s thread, which can guide us through the labyrinth of contemporaneity.

 

Roberta Cerini Baj, 2009