Mannerist cave, petrified forest, or fungal bloom, work no. 13 in the series Fashioned to a device behind a tree evokes hybrid forms from another world. Salvatore Arancio uses the traditional technique of glazed ceramics to create an image that gives pride of place to biomorphic developments. A translation of nature that draws inspiration from geological phenomena, the work is reminiscent of nineteenth-century symbolist ceramics. At once disturbing and seductive, between the mineral and the vegetal, it imitates the natural world and its capacity to escape routes from a modern world governed by technology. This concept is heightened by a performance in which the artist places his head inside the ceramic. He thus enters into a new relationship with the spectator, abolishing temporality and deconstructing perception to deliver a hallucinatory vision of a world freed from technological excess.

Text written by Oriane Poret as part of the partnership between the École du Louvre and Lafayette Anticipations – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin.

Exhibition