In Rome, for the first time in Italy, the most recent works of Jan Fabre

From Jan. 31 to March 1, 2025, Galleria Mucciaccia in Rome will host the visionary art of Jan Fabre with an exhibition that, for the first time in Italy, brings together 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). A body of works that traverse the essence of human thought, the fragility of life and the transformative power of art, “playing” with the performativity of materials to explore existential, spiritual and scientific themes through a constant dialogue between body, mind and matter. The exhibition is intended to be an exploration of the relationship between matter and spirit, strong in its innovative use of materials such as Carrara marble, Vantablack (the blackest existing version of black) and pencil and tempera colors.

The first chapter Songs of the Canaries (A Tribute to Emiel Fabre and Robert Stroud) is a poetic tribute to the fragility of life, the pursuit of dreams, and humanity’s ongoing quest to understand the heavens. Fabre explores these themes through an installation consisting of works carved from Carrara marble and intimate colored pencil drawings on Vantablack. A series of sculptures depicts canaries perched atop human brains, seemingly contemplating the inner workings of the mind. The feathers of a canary or the veins of a brain are transformed into sculptural poetry through evocative titles such as Thinking Outside the Cage (2024), Sharing Secrets About the Neurons (2024) and Measuring the Neurons (2024).

Central to this first section is the monumental sculpture The Man Who Measures His Own Planet (2024): a figure stands on a ladder, arms outstretched as if to measure the immensity of the sky. The open skull reveals an “terra incognita,” that largely unexplored territory that is the brain, a symbol of the artist’s and man’s relentless quest to understand the incomprehensible; the body is modeled after Fabre’s own, while the face refers to his prematurely deceased brother, Emiel, to whom the exhibition is dedicated.

This first chapter is also a tribute to Robert Stroud, known as the “Birdman of Alcatraz,” a prisoner who became a famous ornithologist, specializing in canaries. In order to study them, Stroud managed to have hundreds of these birds brought to his cell, creatures that even in captivity found the power to sing and inspire the mind. When he was released, when asked by reporters what he planned to do with the rest of his life, Stroud replied, “I will measure clouds.”

The second exhibition chapter, Songs of the Gypsies (A Tribute to Django Reinhardt and Django Gennaro Fabre), mixes jazz and art with the artist’s personal life to explore the relationship between fragility and creation in works that combine iconographic tradition and contemporary innovation. The centerpiece of the installation is 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 his father. Indeed, this second section kicks off on a personal note: Fabre named his first-born son Django Gennaro, where Django refers to Django Reinhardt, virtuoso Belgian gypsy jazz guitarist. Reinhardt had managed to excel and invent his own musical genre from a severe impairment in his left hand due to an accident when he was a boy.

The delicate sculpted childlike forms embody the mystery of birth and creation and are also harbingers of jazz musical scores, which appear both etched into the marble and in the brightly colored drawings, evoking a playful, improvised dimension inspired by young Django’s childhood paintings and Reinhardt’s songs.

The entire exhibition is meant to be a hymn to music, a common thread running through both series: Fabre interweaves notes and images, transforming Django Reinhardt’s gypsy jazz into a visual soundtrack, while canaries, a symbol of song and freedom, become messengers between the earthly and the celestial.

The exhibition, curated by Dimitri Ozerkov, with contributions by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Melania Rossi and Floriana Conte, is accompanied by a catalog full of critical analysis and images.

Hours: Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Closed Sundays.
Free admission.

Photo by Pierluigi Di Pietro

In Rome, for the first time in Italy, the most recent works of Jan Fabre

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