Gianni Politi’s second solo show in Sweden takes its starting point from the space inhabited by the artist, where everything takes place. For many years, the artist has been thought to live in the Ivory Tower; the place inhabited by creatures of privilege but contrary to what everyone thinks, the artist actually lives in caves.
Gianni Politi’s practice, mainly as a painter, is deeply rooted in both the classical and modern pictorial traditions of his native Italy, and his work strives to narrate the struggle of being a contemporary painter today. Politi lives and works in Rome.
Gianni Politi’s second solo show in Sweden takes its starting point from the space inhabited by the artist, where everything takes place. For many years, the artist has been thought to live in the Ivory Tower; the place inhabited by creatures of privilege but contrary to what everyone thinks, the artist actually lives in caves.
Gianni Politi’s practice, mainly as a painter, is deeply rooted in both the classical and modern pictorial traditions of his native Italy, and his work strives to narrate the struggle of being a contemporary painter today. Politi lives and works in Rome.
For many years, the artist has been thought to live in the Ivory Tower; the place inhabited by creatures of privilege.
Indeed, the artist is certainly the most privileged amongst the human creatures.
But contrary to what everyone thinks, the artist actually lives in caves carved into the mountains.
The caves are close to the famous Ivory Tower, but only by convention and access to water.
The artist chooses the cave as the place to build his studio and his work in because it is easily guarded, it only has one entrance, it can be illuminated as one chooses and is perfect for cohabitation with scorpions.
Without the scorpions, the artist would deprive himself of one of the main engines of his work.
The scorpions with which the artist lives in the cave sting him and in doing so feed his research, whatever that may be.
The artist’s studio therefore needs constant humidity and deep darkness to allow the scorpions, and thus his own research, to proliferate.
The cave is chosen according to this criteria by the artist, who should therefore avoid bright or ample places.
The artist’s work, fuelled by narrowness, darkness, humidity and the constant venomous stings of scorpions, thus originates within the mountain range that rises northwest of the Ivory Tower.
In my research, the artists I know have all built caves on their own, independently, by digging into the mountain with their own hands. Some have taken refuge in caves previously inhabited and excavated by some other artists, some artists even build large cave systems in which they cohabit with other artists.
I have always questioned artists who rent a space inside the Ivory Tower condominium.
- Gianni Politi