INTRODUCTION
In March 2011 Philippe Daverio commissioned his collaborator Jean
Blanchaert to go to Vicenza to see the work of Errante. A month later,
Philippe Daverio, encouraged by Blanchaert’s favorable report, visited
the artist’s studio to appraise the works in person. He immediately
decided to support Errante and to organize an exhibit with him, believing
him to be one of the most interesting artists in the contemporary
Italian scene for the uniqueness of his work that not only is to be
seen, but also touched. This is how a working friendship began, after
several meetings in which today’s exhibit took shape. However, for
health reasons, Professor Daverio will not be present. Jean Blanchaert
will stand in for him, as he has followed the project with enthusiasm
since the beginning.
PHILIPPE DAVERIO - JEAN BLANCHAERT
When an artist has a last name that sounds artistic, he is born
lucky. «What are you doing, moon, in the sky? Tell me, what are
you doing, Silent moon?» sang Giacomo Leopardi’s errant
shepherd at night. Errante is also a wandering shepherd, but he
doesn’t gather sheep, rather ideas. He gathers and materializes
them to present his suggestions and his insights. His work is
evocative and intimate inspired by music, industry and
agriculture. Errante’s preparation of a complex “mestica” results in
the creation of a magical material: the soft bubble. It’s plastic as
soft as meat but as punchy as the lava with which the artist can
wrap and set forever that which fascinates him.
Errante is like a volcano in eruption, he covers and sets in place. His
works that are born from this process seem compact, but upon
touching them they bend, because Erranta captures the soul, not the
body of things, leaving the imprints that we see with the task of
describing what soul we are dealing with. An apparently concrete task,
but in reality abstract and philosophical because the soul, like air and
music can be felt but not caught. Instead, Errante allows us to touch
these spirits: if we push his work with our hand, the shape flexes and,
for a second, we can enter the essence of the sheathed object. In this
way the artist is able to create a sort of spiritual biography of our time
that often gives dignity to forgotten rubbish.
An installation is also on exhibit. It is Errante’s poetic room, but it is
also the room of Errante’s poetry, wandering and catchable, that roams
and guides us in the world of the artist. Outside, a black wall makes a
mass of scrap and engines come out of the lumber roof eternit. It’s
industrial archeology, it’s the memory of the factory’s soul, it’s nostalgia
for the plant. One seems to still hear the noise. Inside, instead, there is
a sort of bedouin tent, a mediation room, from the white walls emerge
trombones, saxophones, violins, cane thickets, doors, bottles, fruit
crates. Everything can be sheathed. The ceiling is of apple, ready to be
gathered and the floor is dark, also soft. As Carlo Scarpa said «a floor
can be judged by the feet». The passive sensation that it transmits, in
fact, makes you think about the meaning of walking.
In the room with nine works of art, the following are gathered: tubes
and siphons seem like a tangle of light and pure shapes; the pile of
reeds of watering pipes has involuntarily become the rose to which it
gave water; the engines that are dark seem to still have the light of the
lubricating oil on them and even seem to give off the smell; the
pumpkins, generous and sensual, are there, within reach; figs are
chaotically entrapped. There is also, of course, a tribute to the egg and
the romantic tribute to a ruby colored Vespa. Finally, an elegant green
grinder on a black background that has at its side the machine worker
that worked it. This worker is an artist. He’s there but you can’t see
him. His name is Errante.
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