Jonathan Giustini
"Like Salmon Warriors"
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That your messy materials can infect and become a virus.
And thus slip into the deep waters. The cold and deep waters of memory.
It seems like a prayer. Prayers on fire. Maybe it's just a prayer. A wish that it can really happen. See you in heaven again if you still wear that dress.
Rearrange the memory. An oracular desire.
With this exhibition and long representation.
As has already happened. To me. To you. Perhaps. I wish you. May it still happen. All time.
It happened to them. Which these materials have now partly decided to fix. To reveal. In a great exhibition and representation of artistic life.
You will need this example to guide you on the path of your step. To you who visit this exhibition. That you might know these artists. And their works. Hence their thinking.
Come closer.
Think of it as a river running down the valley. That breaks the banks and its dam.
I let myself flow, go, push and try to mix in the flow of the road, of memory. In this great street university. That you can suddenly see it from a disused angle, from a false window perspective. You turn around, you hide, you hide behind a curtain or a veil and here comes this look. This possibility, perhaps.
A curve, a bend of water. A slope and then a rise. A vortex. A reel.
These are the rivers. That envelop you along the way.
Climb the step of a long ladder. Different doors touch your hands.
Catch your breath by looking at low doors. Shoots of light. Drafts of sunshine.
I want to participate in their courses, in their archaic language dictions, in a lesson n 1, n 2, n 3. But where are they held? I only see shops, tobacconists, restaurants, Chinese bazaars, fruit and vegetables. Barren fields and large supermakers. Temporary workshops and outlets.
Where can I find them?
With the outrageous craving of dreams I walk the streets. And suddenly it seems to me that I am going upstream of the warrior salmon. Which are these artists to me. Salmon warriors, because they do not fear the rules. They are not afraid of conventions. They are not afraid of life. They know their fate.
It is a warm current, which I taste, which I have waited for and which I now feel. It surrounds me and leads me.
I see the shadows of the warrior salmon. Their litanies.
Now I follow them. I observe them. Every now and then I have to pick up the pace. Sometimes even slow down. Stop me. Take a breath.
They mimic the labyrinth and have a borderless language that breaks heart and stone. They only keep what they love. They only love what they understand. They only understand what they see.
Salmon warriors who go up the stream of life. Seen from their own perspective.
They are tattooers of stars on the skin. They are Indian chiefs sitting by the fire. They are stubborn corn eaters. They are thistles, chickpeas, beans. Dry but still fragrant bread. Sardinian red wine. I am from Naples and from Nessundove. Lived between Brazil, the Americas and the suburbs. I am now in Rome.
They fresco walls and set long tables. They adorn windows and split stone. They hammer instead of talking. They moo silently and furiously on the paper, between the plates. The long fingers ringed in the sky.
The world is a collage and we are blotting papers. They once said in their pamphlets from the street university.
They have not lost that graphic, amanuensis, chicken and corn attitude.
They climb the stairs like little monkeys. It is their way of making art.
Then they jump to the ground. And they caress their bellies. And they bounce. They are shy as in Jacques Brel's song
Ça se tortille
Ça s'entortille
Ça sautille
Ça se met en vrille
Ça se recroqueville
Ça rêve d'être un lapin
Peu importe
D'où ils sortent
The more zoomorphic they are, the higher they rise. To see themselves then anamorphic.
To tell us that art tastes like bananas, creamed rice and apple pie. To show us their studios as large kitchens. Vuccirie. They smile as they cook. They penetrate with the looks into the veins of the skin. And puff of color. And of foam.
They are warrior salmon. Who do not make the leap. They are strange. Arriving in a certain place, they go back. And they start all over again.
Jonathan Giustini