Erroneous Handshake

Filippo Cegani

Acrylic on Board

40 x 50 cm

About the Work :: If the armours functioned as a medium and methaphor to describe the irony and weakness of toxic masculity, the porcelain transports us to a dimension of nostalgia and weakness, a softer universe compared to the roughness of the previous one. The distance suggested by the out of focus background and the candid scales of gray obtained on the statuettes takes us on a journey that we can all reconnect with a distant past. Typically sold after the Second World War, these statuettes became an ironic symbol for the artist’s generation of the stereotyped grandma’s house. Interested not by the animal in itself but by the bond that humans develop with it the artist started this aesthetic journey, reproducing used statuettes found on sale online. Symbols such as shadows of people leaving the statues create a melancholic enviroment, in strong contrast with the sometimes comical look of these abandoned statuettes. The focus of the artist is not on the inanimated object but on the bond that the owners developed with these statuettes; collecting, cleaning, caring and sharing their very home with them. Such care turns into nothing by the act of sale, giving a fixed price to an object once without a value, even if, without a purpose. This glorification of the useless forces us to question the reasons behind the affection created by these silent and abandoned companion, and in a way pushes us love them too.