L'abbraccio

Holding the opponent to prevent his movements is an unfair act in boxing; but at the end of the meeting the same action restores the mutual respect of the boxers. Estimate, empathy, love: the embrace translates emotions into physical and bodily language, it is a shared rite that tightens and secures plural bodies in one being.

In an Attic olpe (jug) from the 6th century BC, the Painter of Rhodes joins the two black figures in a hug that prepares for the kiss. Today, in the elliptical and asymmetrical shape of the carpet, the embrace is the boundary of an intimate space recovered, the surface within which far-off universes can touch.

Human or divine creatures merge in that oval which, according to the alchemical tradition, is the incubator of the rebis, thev double, primitive and eternal figure. The Hug is the physical sign of the link between Manzoni’s abstractism, iconoclast and achrome, which substantiates the materia itself of the artwork, and pop and iconophile culture fed by social media, protocols of the contemporary communication. “Ci si abbraccia per ritrovarsi interi” (Alda Merini).

Milan, January 28th 2020