The Bodies of the Living. On the painting of Filippo Manfroni. Glimpses of naked bodies subjected to blinding light, often frontal, on a flat... Read more

background. The indistinct background, almost always black, prevents the emergence of a real 'scene', nailing the gaze to a close-up view that allows neither detachment nor 'good distance'. Is a contemporary figurative art, a representation of the body that still makes sense in a world founded as never before on the production, manipulation and dissemination of images, in which nudes of all kinds and species proliferate, fatally destined for standardisation? Can an artist today be so foolish as to believe in the figure, to attempt to find a figure that is not a mere representation of the already known? Filippo Manfroni's entire research is based on this titanic challenge. It is said that there are only two possible ways to escape the banality of the figure: by abstraction, towards the concept, and by the sensible way, according to a logic of sensation. Manfroni opts for the second route, subjecting the bodies to a subtle process of dissolution. By erasing entire elements, by emptying them, by fusing them with other bodies or with the dense magma of the bottom that threatens to swallow them, or by subjecting them to anonymous forces, casts of colour that further undermine their integrity. Defenceless bodies, passive in the face of the forces that pass through them, which maintain by contrast, as their only form of resistance, form and sensuality, enhanced by violent chiaroscuro. In spite of the cynicism of a gaze addicted to millions of nude-clichés, there is life in those bodies, an ephemeral dance of mobile graves, poised between the evanescence of the ghost and the pulsating immobility of flesh, still blood and already a memory or hallucination. Maria Cristina Addis, Centre for Semiotics and Image Theory Omar Calabrese (University of Siena) Close