Jan Fabre

“Knight of the Night,” Jan Fabre’s current exhibition in Florence, is wonderfully nocturnal; one might call it a voyage into the unknown regions of the regenerative power of one’s inner being, a visionary itinerary studded with glimmers and depth. Here, symbolic and archetypal figurations are arrayed—sculptures of scarab gems that depict skulls and of fragments of body armor—and the knight is the artist himself. Fabre identifies with Lancelot, of the Arthurian Breton romance and protagonist of the twelfth-century medieval poem by Chrétien de Troyes. Fabre first references the knight in his 2004 film Lancelot, referring to him as “the knight of desperation [who] triumphed over himself.”

The sculptures where pieces of armor coincide with body parts are powerfully evocative, as in Armatura (Pettorale) (Armor [Breastplate]), Armatura (Braccio) (Armor [Arm]), andArmatura (Gambale) (Armor [Leg]), all 1997. Along with these, some skull sculptures, such as Teschio con le chiavi dell’inferno (Skull with the Keys of Hell), 2015, stage a theater of nature. All these works are made with insects, shimmering beetles that, with their polychrome armor and radiating antennae, draw upon an amazement that comes directly from natural physicality and gives rise to a fantastical world. Images of the corporeal fragment or of the skull thus become the place where a dialectic between beauty and transience unfolds that is fundamental to Fabre’s work. These are images of a precious and shining vanitas, metamorphoses that are between horror and wonder, astonishment and fascination.

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.