Memento Mori 2020
2020 Alberto Favaro
Dance of death in contemporary interiors.
Collage, 2020-2021
Various Direct mail advertisement "Magazines +
the Dance of death by Hans Holbein.
Published by Spaziogamma, “Fantastic Cosmos” catalogue 2021
Short description
"..Favaro does not reference Holbein in a postmodern pastiche, but rather appropriates his work, restoring the political and satirical essence of the Dance of Death. In the 2016 edition curated by Ulinka Rublack, it is the scholar herself who highlights the social critique embedded in the cycle—a systematic denunciation of the greed of the powerful. Holbein's method is the depiction of the fantastical through the consistent inclusion of everyday elements.
In Alberto Favaro's work, it is precisely the concrete nature of commercial objects that drives the representation. Promotional magazines for luxury homes and domestic goods serve as the starting point for a subversion of reality. Luxury for the few, in speculative seafront developments, is delivered to the homes of islanders, promising access to the exclusive. Thus, the most elite penthouses are presented in glossy tones, offering glimpses that suggest ownership of Valletta’s ancient harbor. The inhabitants of this privilege, as in Holbein’s time, are still the powerful: silhouettes that clearly trace their origins to a black-and-white past. Favaro retrieves these figures, patiently cuts them out, and—using his architectural background—re-situates them as characters in a hypothetical rendering. The manual act of collage extends the timeline but forces the artist into physical contact with the page, with the scale of the figures, and with the perspective. It’s a continual process of calibrating spaces, forsaking the automation of digital tools, while reclaiming the cut and incision of the original through daily practice.
The "concrete contradiction" that drives the ideals of Fantastic Cosmos is present in Favaro’s work, in both his practice and his reading of the social landscape. His perspective is not romantically tied to the Mediterranean island he has chosen to live on, but rather an act of denunciation against the most controversial aspects of Europe—problems that find tangible expression in Malta’s daily life: passport sales, tax evasion, gambling, and the defense of borders.
European history, on which we have built a rhetoric of inclusion, clashes with the constant refusal to address the problems associated with immigration, providing a backdrop to privilege. The Knights’ walls—once tools of defense and control—now form the scenic backdrop for modern luxury, for a modernity still encapsulated in the machine and airplane of Futurist memory.
In the face of this reality, the only possible revolution is the enactment of creative expression, a response to intellectual death. Only by celebrating death can we reclaim the value of actively engaging in critical life."
Text by Irene Biolchini
form Spaziogamma, “Fantastic Cosmos” catalogue 2021