Milan, at the Gaburro Gallery the exhibition

Until Oct. 11, it is possible to visit Stella, Jan Fabre ’s solo exhibition of video installations, photographs, drawings and sculptures, at the Gaburro Gallery in Milan, on the occasion in the festival Amore e bellezza sono i poteri supremi, entirely dedicated to Jan Fabre’s theatrical work (at the Out Off Theater in Milan from Sept. 10 to Oct. 13). Love and beauty are recurring themes in Jan Fabre’s work. The Out Off Theater in Milan will present, on premiere, five monologues by the artist: Simona, the gangster of art with Irene Urciuoli, I am an error with Irene Urciuoli, I’m sorry with Stella Höttler, Elle était et elle est, mêmewith Els Deceukelier, I believe in the legend of love with Ivana Jozić.

At the center of the exhibition, curated by Melania Rossi, is an unprecedented visual dramaturgy, which crosses different expressive mediums and transports the viewer on a journey through space and time, where the protagonist-performer Stella Höttler plays the role of Cassandra, mythical unheard prophetess. In the video installation Schande übers ganze Erdenreich! (Shame on the whole earthly realm!), the actress plays a young prophetess in ecstasy. Her bare feet sink into the soft earth as she declaims a universal, ancient and, at the same time, contemporary prayer, which propagates in the form of earth, water, air, fire and energy. Moving on stage with her are turtles, oracular animals par excellence.

Turtles are creatures-guides: it is said that on their carapace is drawn the mystery of the universe, the cyclical nature of time. Wise, patient, constant, characterized by a slowness that subverts laws and limits, turtles are the protagonists of endless stories and tales that punctuate human thought, paid homage by the artist in a special selection of sculptures and drawings displayed in the exhibition. Against the repressive mechanisms of an anesthetized contemporary world, Fabre wants to remind us in this exhibition of our deepest, Dionysian part. That surrender to the natural flow that makes us resonate with the energy of the cosmos.

If in the filmic work Stella is the oracular prophetess in ecstasy, in the series of photographs in the exhibition, titled Smoking Stella, the actress herself, still wearing her colorful stage clothes, is in the relaxed backstage version. We see this beautiful woman playing with a lit cigarette: in these photographs, rigorously taken by the artist in analog, there is a reference to Flemish interior painting but also to 1970s erotic photography. Precisely thanks to the feminist posters of those same years, today this young woman can finally free herself from the political message and play with her licentiousness consciously, without the need to give explanations. The warm light, the bold and intimate poses, the full beauty of a young female body, the cigarette to emphasize certain parts of the body of this seductive contemporary Pandora: ear, mouth, vagina and anus. Jan Fabre wants to invite us to reconsider these “holes” as doors through which we try to know the world. Doors through which we peek at what is external to us and which allow us to feel, enjoy, suffer.

The photographic series is part of an artist’s multiple project with the publishing house Parallelo42 Contemporary Art, which also contains essays written by critic Giacinto Di Pietrantonio on Jan Fabre’s artistic universe. This special edition, with its precious design, will be displayed and presented for the first time at the gallery exhibition.

In the vanitas-like vision of the Belgian artist, all this becomes the smoke of a cigarette, pure pleasure, for him who has always been a smoker. Metamorphic and powerful fascination, that linked to the act of smoking, whose origins go back to remote ages of human history. Irony and memento mori, the strong sense of unity and exchange between life and death are profoundly present in the work of the Belgian artist, who in this exhibition recalls the most visceral spirit of the classical world and, today that the gods have fled (in reference to Heidegger’s Interrupted Paths), the body of the young woman in ecstasy becomes the body of art, a modern oracle to be interpreted, observed, experienced.

For all information, you can visit the official Gaburro Gallery website.

Image: Jan Fabre, Smoking Stella (2020; analog photograph on aluminum, 23.5 x 35 cm)

Milan, at the Gaburro Gallery the exhibition

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