19 September – 13 October 2024
On September 19, Gaburro Gallery opens in Milan "Stella", a solo exhibition by Belgian visionary theatre author and visual artist Jan Fabre featuring video installations, photographs, drawings and sculptures.
On the occasion of the festival Love and Beauty are the Supreme Powers, entirely dedicated to Jan Fabre's theatrical work (at Out Off Theater of Milan from 10 Sept. to 13 Oct.), Gaburro Gallery presents the Belgian master's solo exhibition entitled Stella, curated by Melania Rossi. Love and beauty are leitmotiv of Jan Fabre’s production. The Theater Out Off in Milan will present the premiere of five artist’s monologues: Simona, the gangster of art con Irene Urciuoli, Io sono un errore con Irene Urcioli, I’m sorry con Stella Höttler, Elle était et elle est, même con Els Deceukelier, I believe in the legend of love con Ivana Jozić.
A never-before-seen visual dramaturgy, spanning different expressive mediums, transports the viewer on a journey through space and time, where the protagonist-performer Stella Höttler plays the role of Cassandra, mythical unheeded prophetess. In the video installation Schande übers ganze Erdenreich!, the actress plays a young prophetess in ecstasy. Her bare feet sinking into the soft earth, as she recites a universal prayer, at once ancient and contemporary, that spreads out as 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 shell 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 protagonists of endless stories and tales that punctuate human thought, celebrated by the artist in a special selection of sculptures and drawings on display in the exhibition. Against the repressive mechanisms of an anesthetized contemporary world, Fabre reminds us in this exhibition of our deepest, Dionysian side. That surrender to the natural flow, which makes us resonate with the energy of the cosmos.
If in the filmic work Stella is the ecstatic oracular prophetess, in the photographic series on display in the exhibition, titled Smoking Stella, the actress herself, still wearing her colorful stage clothes, is in her relaxed backstage version. We can 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. 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 needing to give explanations.
The warm light, the bold and intimate poses, the beauty of a young female body, the cigarette used to emphasize some body parts of this seductive contemporary Pandora: ear, mouth, vagina and anus. Jan Fabre, with sensual irony, invites us to re-consider these "holes" as doors through which we try to get to know the world. Doors through which we peek at what is external to us and allow us to feel, enjoy, suffer. The photo series is part of an artist's multiple project with the publishing house Parallelo 42, which also contains all the essays that Giacinto Di Pietrantonio wrote about Jan Fabre’s artistic universe. This beautifully designed special edition will be exhibited and presented for the first time at the gallery show. Smoking Stella appears as an intimate, almost private, poetic manifesto in which Fabre, as an artist and as a man, chooses to hand over the power of fire, the mystery of smoke, and the perseverance of ritual to the sinuosity of a woman's body. In the vanitas vision of the Belgian artist, all this becomes cigarette smoke, pure pleasure, for him who has always been a smoker; a metamorphic and powerful fascination is linked to the act of smoking, whose origins go back to ancient times of human history.
Irony and memento mori, the strong sense of unity and exchange between life and death are deeply 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 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.
On 17th September, the Outoff Theater will host the premiere of “I’m sorry”, a monologue written by Jan Fabre and Stella Höttler interpreted by the actress.
INFORMATION
Opening and presentation 19 September 06.30 p.m.
Tuesday to Saturday
11.00-13.00 / 14.00-19.00
Galleria Gaburro
Via Cerva 25,
20122 Milan
press@galleriagaburro.com
www.galleriagaburro.com
Tel. +39 02 99262529
Teatro Out Off
Via Mac Mahon 16
20155 Milan
info@teatrooutoff.it
Tel. +390234532140
