{"id":25878,"date":"2016-04-01T17:45:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T15:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/jan-fabre-spiritual-guards-2\/"},"modified":"2016-10-27T12:31:38","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T10:31:38","slug":"jan-fabre-spiritual-guards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/jan-fabre-spiritual-guards\/","title":{"rendered":"Jan Fabre. Spiritual Guards"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Forte Belvedere in Florence is getting set to host this year\u2019s edition of its annual fixture with great art. \u00a0Following the two international exhibitions showcasing the art of Giuseppe Penone and Antony Gormley, the former Medici fortress\u2019 bastions this year will be hosting the works of Jan Fabre<\/strong>, one of the most innovative and important figures on the contemporary art scene.\u00a0 A \u201ctotal\u201d artist, Fabre, who born in Antwerp in 1958, lets his imagination run riot in the very different spheres of sculpture, drawing and installation, performance art, film and the theatre<\/p>\n

The exhibition, entitled Jan Fabre. Spiritual Guards<\/em><\/strong>, promoted by the Comune di Firenze, will pan out between the Forte Belvedere, Palazzo Vecchio and Piazza della Signoria.\u00a0 In fact, it will be one of the most complex and multifaceted exhibitions that this Flemish artist and author has ever produced in any public space in Italy.\u00a0 For the very first time, a living artist will be expounding his art in three venues of outstanding historical and artistic importance at once.\u00a0 Roughly one hundred of Fabre\u2019s works dating from 1978 to 2016 will be on display, including bronze and wax sculptures, performance films and works made of wing cases of the jewel scarab.\u00a0 Fabre will also be presenting two new works specifically devised and produced for this occasion.\u00a0 The premiere is going to be an event of outstanding visual impact with strong symbolic connotations:\u00a0 on the morning of 15 April, two of Fabre\u2019s bronze sculptures will be \u2013 temporarily \u2013 joining the open-air museum that is Piazza Signoria. \u00a0One of them, an exceptionally large work entitled Searching for Utopia<\/em>, will interact with the equestrian monument to Grand Duke Cosimo I, a Renaissance masterpiece by Giambologna, while the second, called The man who measures the clouds (American version, 18 years older)<\/em>, will stand proudly on the Arengario outside Palazzo Vecchio between the copies of Michelangelo\u2019s David<\/em> and Donatello\u2019s Judith<\/em>.\u00a0 In both works observers will be able to identify the artist\u2019s own features in his dual capacity as knight and guardian, as a mediator between heaven and earth, between natural and spiritual forces. Against art that placed itself in the service of political and financial power \u2013 the art of Piazza della Signoria with its marble giants (the David, Hercules and Neptune) and its biblical, mythological and local figures (Judith, Perseus and the Marzocco Lion of Florence) \u2013 Jan Fabre pits an art seeking to depict and to embody the power of the imagination, the mission of the artist as \u201cspiritual guard\u201d.\u00a0 And he does this in a square designed and used since the Renaissance as a figurative agora` and stage setting, a square which has become an iconic paradigm of the relationship between art and the public space, and in which the symbolic and spectacular function of the modern monument has been configured in exemplary language. Also starting 15 April, Palazzo Vecchio will be hosting a series of sculptures interacting with the frescoes and artefacts housed in some of the rooms open to the public, particularly the Quartiere di Eleonora, the Sala dell\u2019Udienza and the Sala dei Gigli.\u00a0 The works on display will include a huge globe 2.5 metres in diameter and totally clad in iridescent beetle wing cases, its shape and size interacting to perfection with the celebrated globe in the Sala delle Mappe geografiche,\u00a0made by Ignazio Danti in the 16th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

\"Jan<\/a>
Jan Fabre Globo (1997)\/Globe (1997) Fotografo\/Photographer: Syb’l. S. Copyright: Angelos bvba<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The following month will see the inauguration of the exhibition at the Forte Belvedere, on 14 May, where the bastions and the villa will be showcasing about sixty works of art in bronze and in wax, along with a series of films focusing on some of the artist\u2019s historic performances.\u00a0 Curators Melania Rossi and Joanna De Vos, together with the project\u2019s art director Sergio Risaliti, have chosen the Forte Belvedere as the thematic heart of the Jan Fabre. Spiritual Guards<\/em> exhibition both for its spatial characteristic and for its historical connotations. The fortress once served not only to defend Florence from outside attack but also to protect the Medici family in troubled times, thus it was a stronghold for both external and internal defence suggesting a journey through the life, the ambitions and the woes of the powerful Medici lords and alluding to opposing human perceptions and sensations such as control and abandonment, but also to opposing needs and desires such as armed protection and spiritual elan so deep and so deep-rooted as to influence the form of architecture and the configuration of natural space, especially here at the Forte Belvedere where the need for protection in the awareness that one is still defenceless is particularly easy to grasp. These ambiguities which form not just history but the entire experience and vitality of mankind, will be represented by two sculptural alignments consisting in seven bronze scarabs placed on the fort\u2019s lookout posts and a series of full-figure self-portraits of the artist \u2013 all of them maintain the original silicone bronze colour for that reason they have glow reflecting surrounding countryside like a spiritual halo \u2013 which will be populating the corners of the bastions outside the villa, surrounding it. The scarabs are angels of metamorphosis, guardians who symbolise in ancient religions and in Flemish and Italian vanitas paintings the transition between the earthly dimension and the afterlife with their ceaseless movement.\u00a0 At the same time, they have a splendid carapace which dramatically highlights the vulnerability of that \u201cregal\u201d body. Thus also Jan Fabre, who defines himself, lives and expresses himself as a knight of despair and a warrior of beauty, who sheds and dons his weapons by deploying his army in its shining, iridescent armour in Florence\u2019s highest point. This legion is called on here to tell of devotion to life, to defend the fragile and pure beauty that art is capable of generating, against an invisible foe who comes from inside and outside at once, always ready to strike and to wound. The exhibition will continue on the first floor of the villa, which will be open to the public again for the first time in many years, with wax sculptures and with films of the artist\u2019s performances in a setting of contiguity and continuity both with the works on display outside and with the magnificent Florentine cityscape.The spectacular bronze integration in Piazza della Signoria and the work produced with jewel scarab wing cases on display in Palazzo Vecchio will be interacting with the urban fabric and with one of the most visited historical palazzi in the city, forming a perfect visual and conceptual complement to the exhibition. The exhibition\u2019s motto and device, Spiritual Guards<\/em>, should be interpreted as an encouragement to live a heroic life, be it in war or unarmed in defence of the imagination and of beauty.<\/p>\n

\"Jan<\/a>
Jan Fabre Scarabeo stercorario sacro con albero di alloro (2012)\/Holy dung beetle with laurel tree (2012) Fotografo\/Photographer: Pat Verbruggen Copyright: Angelos bvba<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is worth recalling here that Jan Fabre, in the course of his long career which began in the 1970s, has a long history of interaction with Florence, where his work has been shown in many collective exhibitions and where he has also brought several of his productions for the theatre.\u00a0 Two of his bronze busts from the Chapters<\/em> series, in which he portrays himself with astonishing horns and donkey\u2019s ears, joined the Uffizi collections in 2012, while he received the Michelangelo Award for sculpture in the second edition of the Settimana Michelangiolesca in 2015.<\/p>\n