Studio Trisorio and the Campania Regional Museum Directorate are pleased to present Homo aquaticus and his planet, a never-before-seen installation by Jan Fabre. The work will be on display in the church of the 14th century Certosa of Capri, from July 7 to September 30, 2022.
The project, curated by Melania Rossi, consists of 16 sculptures in white Carrara marble and black Belgian marble on which the artist has been working on for the last four years. The works are inspired by the relationship between man and the mysterious abysses and by water as a vital and primordial element.
Two figures in diving suits allude to the human being's desire for knowledge and to the propensity to "plunge into the unknown" which has always propelled us towards the exploration of unknown worlds. In a kind of “free diving” into his imagination, Jan Fabre brings out curious hybrid beings with fish-like bodies and detailed realistic human faces lying on brains.
The protagonist of this installation is precisely the organ of thought which the two divers seem to have just brought to the surface from the depths of the sea. For more than two decades Fabre has been engaged in research on the human brain, with expert scientists in biology and neuroscience and has brought his investigations back into his artistic universe (drawings, sculptures and film-performances).
Homo aquaticus resumes the vision of the great French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau who had imagined a voluntary evolution of man towards life under water, partly through natural adaptation and partly with the intervention of technology. Inspired by studies on "Human fish", Fabre tries to imagine the missing link in the evolution of man from the sea to life on earth, creating new metamorphoses from man to fish and vice versa.
This work by Jan Fabre, conceived for the oldest monastery of the island, a spiritual place immersed in a nature of light and water, reminds us that, after all, a person who swims underwater returns from where he departed, where the source of life has begun and continues to regenerate itself.
Inauguration: July 7, 2022, 18:00
The exhibition remains open until September 30
Location: Certosa di San Giacomo, via Certosa, 10, 80076 Capri NA
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