︎︎︎Candido, 1994
Vincenzo Cabiati was trained in the studio of his father Achille, who was a painter that took part of the realism movement in the ‘40s. Upon his arrival in Milano, where he moved to from Liguria at the end of the ‘80s, he began his practice among the artists of the group of Via Lazzaro Palazzi. His research comes from an immense iconographic repertoire made up of art (Chardin, Courbet, Lorrain, Man Ray), cinema (Kubrick, Greenaway, Truffaut) and architecture (Ledoux), abstracting the sources from the original context to give them a brand new emotional and poetic value. He uses a great variety of languages: painting, watercolor, drawing, sculpture, photography, installation, video.
During the more recent years, the artist’s interest is primarily projected towards polychrome ceramics. His obsession with sequence and frames makes cinema an inexhaustible source of images. Cabiati’s works are part of numerous national and international collections. He lives and works in Milan.
/Candido, 1994
Cotton, cotton wool (made in collaboration with Sartoria Bassani)
“(...) lived a youth whom Nature had endowed with a most sweet disposition. His face was the true index of his mind. He had a solid judgment joined to the most unaffected simplicity; and hence, I presume, he had his name of Candide. (...)”*
A wonderful condition. A state of grace.
In that moment, looking at the window of a bookstore, I saw the cover of an English literature book with a painting of a Victorian-era dress printed on it. Only form, decoration. No body.
*Candide, Voltaire, 1759
