“The shadow of Orpheus and Eurydice”

carved © 2021, Artwork dimensions : Height/Width/Depth : 80 x 46 x 16 cm, weight 46 kg, marble, © Protected by copyright.
This is a unique work.
The ancient Greeks understood that all human dramas revolve around the ubiquitous and inevitable experience of loss. Greek mythology revolves around this essential paradox of human life.
Our time is limited, our control is limited and from this is born the great emotion of human existence. We love intensely, because we know that our mastery is weak.
The love story of Orpheus and Eurydice exemplifies this principle in all its heartbreaking beauty.
According to legend, Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, dies at their wedding being bitten by a snake. Orpheus prays to the gods to allow him to save her, descending into hell to bring Eurydice back to life.
The gods allow him to try, but on one condition - he does not have to look back. Orpheus respected this condition until the threshold of hell; but when he was ready to cross the fatal frontier, driven by the fear and impatience of love, he looked back. At that moment, the gods are faithful to their cruel promise, and Eurydice is pulled back into darkness and thus loses his wife a second time.
The despair caused by the final loss of Eurydice made Orpheus despise and insult the women of Thrace. Eventually, exasperated, they retaliated by tearing him to pieces, prey to the ecstasy specific to bahic orgies.
After his death, the shadow of Orpheus descends underground, into hell, he finds Euridice, “he embraces her with longing. He walks along the same path / He comes after him, he goes forward and maybe / Without fear he looks back at Euridice. ” (Ovid, in "Metamorphoses", the eleventh book).
This last passage is the theme of my sculpture: when the shadow of Orpheus turns his head and looks at Eurydice without fear because the gods could no longer punish him.
I sculpted the two characters in unusual shapes because they are both in a dreamlike, unreal environment, in eternity, he is a shadow and she is an illusion. I sculpted the lower half of Orpheus in bas-relief, going through the strange place of hell and the upper part of the body in three dimensions. I sculpted Eurydice with her body shape in the negative

“Icarus - the dream of freedom”

Carved © 2021, Artwork dimensions : Height/Width/Depth : 101 x 74 x 37 cm, weight 28 kg. Marble, threaded iron and wood.
© Protected by copyright.
This is a unique work of art.
Icarus, the legend that stands as a testimony to one of man's greatest dreams: that of flying.
From childhood dreams to flights over seas and countries in commercial planes, space exploration, or more recently, space tourism, our appetite for air seems unquenchable.
But let's go back to ancient times, when the urge to fly was as alive as it is today.
Icarus is the son of Daedalus, presented in Greek mythology as an architect and sculptor, who helped build the famous labyrinth of Knossos in which Minos, the ruler of Crete, imprisoned the Minotaur and often brought virgins and lads as sacrifices to calm them down. lust for human flesh.
After a while, Daedalus, the village of sacrifices made for the Minotaur, plots with Theseus to kill the monster.
As punishment, Minos locks the architect Daedalus and his son, Icarus, in the labyrinth and builds the exit. But the ingenious Daedalus manages to make two pairs of wax and feather wings, for him and his son, who should have saved them.
Daedalus taught his son how to fly: "Icarus, floats in the middle, / I advise you, for too low you will go, it is loaded with water / The feathers, if too high, will burn them like the sun" (Ovid, Metamorphoses, the eighth book).
Icarus, fascinated by the beauty of flight and heights, gets too close to the Sun. The god Helios, angry that people have discovered the secret of the flight, melts with his heat the wings of Icarus, who collapses in the waters of the Aegean Sea and dies.
Icarus is the symbol of the man who tries to surpass himself, but excessive zeal, haste, inexperience and disobedience to parental advice kill his dream.
Whatever meaning we choose, the story remains enchanting and in its first, non-plasticized sense, in which the one who exalts Icarus is the dream of freedom, kept under the fragile wings of the dreamer and defended at the cost of his life.
With a little imagination we could bring the legend to our times when the dream of freedom was shattered by the Covid virus.

“Fascination”

“Fascination”, Walnut wood and marble, HeightWidthDepth 56 x 40 x 50 cm, Weight: 14 kg, carved © 2022
Technique: direct carving with traditional tools
I designed the sculpture by combining two particularly beautiful materials from nature: walnut wood and marble, on the principle of "conceptual art", where the idea ("idea art"), the conception, the process of the work, are considered more significant than the concrete, ultimate form of a certain creation.
This sculpture is part of the "Beauty of Walnut" series, where through direct sculpture I explored the texture, contrast and shape of walnut wood, carving on the cross sections of the wood, on the head of the fibers, where the wood. it is very hard, but reveals its dynamic beauty of growth.
The diversity and nature of the environment constantly provides me with both the challenge and the inspiration to push boundaries.
The two figures carved in marble are fascinated by the amazing technical changes in the world but also by the beauty created by nature in the structure of walnut wood.
Fascinating because in the last hundred years, humanity has experienced unprecedented innovation and change - from skyscrapers to the moon landing, to social media, to human rights and the democratization of art.
Right now in our society everything is moving very fast, time doesn't seem enough anymore, artists seem to find their way much harder, ongoing changes create the need for a continuous state of Transcendence and this is reflected in contemporary art.