CARTE, 2012 | Artist Statement
 

Inventing flathickness 

 

With a penchant for the whirls of fortune and a clin d’oeil to the relativity of vision, Christian Tagliavini issues his very own «Carte». The title means «playing cards», but cards, markings and figures do keep their names and mystery in Italian. You’ll meet characters clad in imaginary, timeless, paper and textile costumes with selected accents of colour making an original and voluptuous code of décor. Their bodies are real, while their gestures surrender, threaten, implore, betray, poison, seduce or irresistibly elude the viewer. 

 

They all live in a visible but not tangible territory between bi- and tri-dimensional - totally created, materially hand-crafted and immortalized by the author with the final photographic «click». We could say that Christian once again explored the paradoxical limits of flat and thick to invent something like flathickness.

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Justus' story

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Look, Justus, also known as »the traitor«. Warrior with light armor and captive in a dimension, that he does not belong to, of a thin era – too thin to be remembered, as the thickness of the cards, that serve as the frame of this story.

 

Already for long time he is kept a tight leash, the diamonds lady is holding him firmly. Opium poppy is the scepter, which has provided her the power of convincement and compelled complaisance, against which not even the toughest of the shields and not even the bravest of the combatants can do anything.

 

Justus is in balance like the card, that is just in danger of sliding away. At this place the time does not find the space, everything is too strait and too thin to be able to go on. Love is the sole weapon, the sole possible dimension to be able to fight. It is not a secret anymore, the eye is already turned away, over the hearts-lady: on the lover.