Performer, designer, sculptor, author and theatrical creator, Jan Fabre is one of the most innovative, complete and complex figures in contemporary artistic research. Galleria Mucciaccia is hosting for the first time in Italy the two most recent chapters of his artistic production: Songs of the Canaries (A Tribute to Emiel Fabre and Robert Stroud) and Songs of the Gypsies (A Tribute to Django Reinhardt and Django Gennaro Fabre). The exhibition is an opportunity to immerse oneself in a journey between symbolism, innovation and personal intimacy, where the relationship between matter and spirit is also explored through innovative use of materials such as Carrara marble, Vantablack (the blackest existing version of black) and pencil and tempera colors.
Songs of the Canaries (A Tribute to Emiel Fabre and Robert Stroud), the first section, is a tribute to the artist’s brother who died at a young age, and to Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz”, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and became a renowned ornithologist and an expert in canaries in prison. The fragility of life, the pursuit of dreams and the search for the deepest meaning of existence are the themes that Fabre explores through an installation composed of Carrara marble works and striking colored pencil drawings on Vantablack. A series of canaries perched atop human brains, seemingly contemplating the inner workings of the mind, accompany the main sculpture (The Man Who Measures His Own Planet - 2024), a figure standing on a ladder, arms outstretched in an attempt to measure the immensity of the sky.
Songs of the Gypsies (A Tribute to Django Reinhardt and Django Gennaro Fabre), the second section, mixes jazz and art with the artist’s personal life. At the heart of the installation are three large Carrara marble sculptures in which Fabre depicts an outsized infant, his son at the age of five and a half months, but as tall as the artist. Fabre named his son Django Gennaro in homage to Django Reinhardt, the virtuoso Belgian gypsy jazz guitarist, acclaimed by musicians of all genres as brilliant and innovative. The delicate carved childlike forms embody the mystery of birth and creation and are also messengers of jazz music scores, which appear both engraved in the marble and in the brightly colored drawings, evoking a playful and improvised dimension, inspired by young Django’s childhood paintings and Reinhardt’s songs.
Photo: Sharing secrets about the neurons, 2024, Carrara marble_Jan Fabre_ph. Pierluigi Di Pietro
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