This was the first painting I made based on the photos of Piero Manzoni. It was fitting that the title refers to Christ to Peter as the rock upon which he will build his church. So in this case, Piero proudly holds the cornerstone to his art career, a can of shit. The painting is a coronation, the large flourish of drapery heralds an arm that bestows upon Piero the power to deem his own refuse as art! Click here for a larger view.
Omnia Vanitas 4'x8' Oil and enamel on canvas. 1996
Here, Manzoni contemplates his canned shit, a modern day Hamlet musing on his own mortality. Once again the theme of memento mori surfaces in my use of still life. The apples scattered on the canvas are in varying states of decay. I've even included a painting of a severed ear on the table to refer to Vincent Van Gogh...a still life object that overtly raises the theme of death. Click here for full view.
Et in Arcadia Ego 6'x5' Oil and enamel on canvas. 1996
The same process is used for this painting. Here I tried to tie the artist's signature to the theme of death and mortality. A model signed by Manzoni looks on as a figure discovers a grave marked with the inscription, "Et in Arcadia Ego"or "I, Death, am also in Arcadia." I placed Manzoni's signature of a woman's backside in the bottom right hand corner and placed a cursive script of my name over my reproduction of Poussin's Et in Arcadia Ego. Each signature was intended to act as a marker or tag similar to "Kilroy was here." Click here for a larger view.
Piero7'x5' Oil on canvas. 1996
Allegory 7'x6' Oil on canvas. 1996
This painting was the last I completed in this series of works based on photographs of Piero Manzoni. In my work prior to this series I had been using appropriated imagery from a variety of sources and combined them into painted collages. I tried to bring together a diverse array of visual languages to tell a story in the painting. For this series, that story and a lot of my source images came from art history. Click here for a larger view.
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