Presentation of the Book "Human Inhuman Vol.2" by Luca Motolese
Friendship. When a friend of yours, who is also one of your favourite artists (a painter or, rather, a creator of images), asks you to write the preface to his latest book — this Human Inhuman Vol.2, which came out immediately after Vol.1, published in spring 2024 (with the preface by another mutual friend, Luca Atzori, a theatre performer and very special poet, certainly originating from a far-off galaxy) — you can only be happy.
Writing about Luca Motolese, known artistically as Akira Zakamoto, born in 1974 in Turin, is very complicated, unless one starts precisely from the human being — that Luca whom I have known not for many years, yet who deep down is a bit as if he had always been there with you, in one way or another: Luca, the legendary friend of your older brother; Luca, the older cousin who takes you out on a Vespa for the first time (and you are eleven years old).
Previous prefaces (Vol. 1, L. Atzori). Now, however, it is necessary to make a sort of premise, which already has the flavour of a conclusion: our Luca is not an 'artist,' and this book cannot have been produced by a 'poet.'
I fully agree with what the aforementioned alien Atzori wrote, introducing the first volume:
The transversal gaze of Luca Motolese goes beyond belonging and identification. The artist of the present is always also a little the artist of the future, not yet fully recognised. The artist reduced to essence, poor perhaps, like those without spirit, heart or money. (..)
The reflection concludes with a necessary appeal to the Bard CB:
(..) Carmelo Bene, a figure who anticipated this 'non-belonging' to the arts. With his theorising of a cinema that cannot be made with cinema, a theatre that cannot be made with theatre, a painting that cannot be made with painting (..).
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, placing oneself in 'listening,' the eternal twenty-year-old. The second volume opens with at least one quotation from Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's Zarathustra, the philosopher of the impossible, perhaps the most beloved during our late adolescence, together of course with Hermann Hesse — before that strange blush descends upon our cheeks, overcome by a sense of shame typical of those who want to forget how educational, instead, those first moments of eroticism and auto-eroticism were, shut away in our little rooms.
Nietzsche, who is not a philosopher but makes the greatest literature; who, for the literary, does not make poetry but is a magnificent philosopher. He is, moreover, a classical philologist, working for a few years as a university lecturer before discovering the Wagnerian wind or fire. The boy from Röcken has, over time, become a kind of toyboy of middle-to-high culture; he is two thousand five hundred years old, but will remain forever a disquieting twenty-year-old full of dreams.
After all, philosophy too cannot be made with philosophy. This is not a discourse on interdisciplinarity in the age of globalisation — no, here something more profound and elusive is at stake (even the discourse on Post-Modernism no longer makes sense, made today, in 2024).
Quite simply, what Nietzsche does is always to place himself in 'listening' with respect to the things of the world, visible/invisible, and in his own way that is what our Luca Motolese does.
Openings, before and after. During the opening of one of his recent exhibitions, with whoever approaches him, Luca avoids speaking of 'technique.' Starting from someone else's reference to a found or discovered detail that can be linked to another detail and then on to infinity, until arriving at painter so-and-so of 1976, with respect to his exhibited work (for instance Black Pig), Akira-Luca intervenes as little as possible. Do you know him? Were you inspired by him? Did you see him on social media, by any chance? It is surely something to do with the collective unconscious. While the improvised expert lays out his cards, Motolese is ready to take everything from him — he could even suck out his soul — and, within a very short time, absorb him into one of his works, be it visual or written.
The post-presentation evenings, then, are an invitation to Dionysus, to life and to healthy confusion. In very random order, one talks of rock music, of comics and manga, of the Peloponnesian wars, of friendship, of post-feminism and robots, of planispheres, of parents, of Piero Ciampi's songs, of a Fassbinder film, of retrogames and new video games, of destroyed Gaza, of pandemics and restrictions, of children, of loves and motorcycle journeys, of the first technological invention in history (the wheel?), of Carlitos Tévez, of the African queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba.
Shall we talk about Vol.2? But we were already doing so… In this splendid and mysterious book too, Human Inhuman Vol. 2, situations emerge that compose the puzzle of life, of every possible life. To place oneself in 'listening' means at the same time being in perennial 'critical detachment.' Nothing is fully satisfying in our contemporary society; Motolese's 'non-poems' — let us call them 'thoughts' or 'fragments' — lack a 'definitive form' (the same goes for his pictorial works, uncatalogable, living in a continuous vortex of movement): does fixing a 'style' of writing or painting go against the attitude of 'openness,' of 'listening,' of 'critical distance'? Probably yes.
Human, All Too Human and Human Inhuman — let us not fall into the little game of comparison and inspiration. Motolese-Zakamoto does not quote or take up any famous text of the past; here it is a matter of a shared attitude.
Meanwhile, let us pull a great art critic out of the hat.
Thus Edoardo Di Mauro wrote of him, within a catalogue for a Turin exhibition of 2023 titled Media-Mente Falso:
(..) he has the ability to land hard blows on the hypocrisy of the society of spectacle and image that characterises our present dimension, using signs, symbols and 'vintage' inserts.
Collage and contrasts are scattered more or less everywhere in these written discourses too; for example in the sixth fragment, titled In the Trattoria, in which the 'retarded' return to the fore (see Vol. 1), with their backsides resting on a cushion of Mongolian sheep's wool, whose footnote on the word in question — today condemned as 'politically incorrect' — opens the field to combat, through social satire (very interesting is the highly personal definition Motolese gives of 'progress'). In other texts we again find these 'retarded,' incapable of seeing the new risks of commodification, consumerism, control: it is called, once again, 'capitalism,' the same damned monster, always it. The 'wicked' are named, by surname, puppets in their turn of a system, as in the hilarious text Scientistic Ring-a-Ring-o'-Roses Pandemonium.
The moving homage to a new love, the reflections on his own family, the references to situations that occurred with lifelong friends, the presence of the sea, are sudden pauses of silence from the chaos of our society; but the fear that they may be ruined by the world of the 'retarded,' or at least contaminated, is very strong (love, family, friendship — are they not, deep down, social conventions created by the same democratic-capitalist society?).
Stop! Conclusion! One could go on for much longer, but what would be the point — let us enjoy this book, let us run to see his paintings; we will come out of it more confused, certainly better and happier.
Writing about Luca Motolese, known artistically as Akira Zakamoto, born in 1974 in Turin, is very complicated, unless one starts precisely from the human being — that Luca whom I have known not for many years, yet who deep down is a bit as if he had always been there with you, in one way or another: Luca, the legendary friend of your older brother; Luca, the older cousin who takes you out on a Vespa for the first time (and you are eleven years old).
Previous prefaces (Vol. 1, L. Atzori). Now, however, it is necessary to make a sort of premise, which already has the flavour of a conclusion: our Luca is not an 'artist,' and this book cannot have been produced by a 'poet.'
I fully agree with what the aforementioned alien Atzori wrote, introducing the first volume:
The transversal gaze of Luca Motolese goes beyond belonging and identification. The artist of the present is always also a little the artist of the future, not yet fully recognised. The artist reduced to essence, poor perhaps, like those without spirit, heart or money. (..)
The reflection concludes with a necessary appeal to the Bard CB:
(..) Carmelo Bene, a figure who anticipated this 'non-belonging' to the arts. With his theorising of a cinema that cannot be made with cinema, a theatre that cannot be made with theatre, a painting that cannot be made with painting (..).
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, placing oneself in 'listening,' the eternal twenty-year-old. The second volume opens with at least one quotation from Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's Zarathustra, the philosopher of the impossible, perhaps the most beloved during our late adolescence, together of course with Hermann Hesse — before that strange blush descends upon our cheeks, overcome by a sense of shame typical of those who want to forget how educational, instead, those first moments of eroticism and auto-eroticism were, shut away in our little rooms.
Nietzsche, who is not a philosopher but makes the greatest literature; who, for the literary, does not make poetry but is a magnificent philosopher. He is, moreover, a classical philologist, working for a few years as a university lecturer before discovering the Wagnerian wind or fire. The boy from Röcken has, over time, become a kind of toyboy of middle-to-high culture; he is two thousand five hundred years old, but will remain forever a disquieting twenty-year-old full of dreams.
After all, philosophy too cannot be made with philosophy. This is not a discourse on interdisciplinarity in the age of globalisation — no, here something more profound and elusive is at stake (even the discourse on Post-Modernism no longer makes sense, made today, in 2024).
Quite simply, what Nietzsche does is always to place himself in 'listening' with respect to the things of the world, visible/invisible, and in his own way that is what our Luca Motolese does.
Openings, before and after. During the opening of one of his recent exhibitions, with whoever approaches him, Luca avoids speaking of 'technique.' Starting from someone else's reference to a found or discovered detail that can be linked to another detail and then on to infinity, until arriving at painter so-and-so of 1976, with respect to his exhibited work (for instance Black Pig), Akira-Luca intervenes as little as possible. Do you know him? Were you inspired by him? Did you see him on social media, by any chance? It is surely something to do with the collective unconscious. While the improvised expert lays out his cards, Motolese is ready to take everything from him — he could even suck out his soul — and, within a very short time, absorb him into one of his works, be it visual or written.
The post-presentation evenings, then, are an invitation to Dionysus, to life and to healthy confusion. In very random order, one talks of rock music, of comics and manga, of the Peloponnesian wars, of friendship, of post-feminism and robots, of planispheres, of parents, of Piero Ciampi's songs, of a Fassbinder film, of retrogames and new video games, of destroyed Gaza, of pandemics and restrictions, of children, of loves and motorcycle journeys, of the first technological invention in history (the wheel?), of Carlitos Tévez, of the African queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba.
Shall we talk about Vol.2? But we were already doing so… In this splendid and mysterious book too, Human Inhuman Vol. 2, situations emerge that compose the puzzle of life, of every possible life. To place oneself in 'listening' means at the same time being in perennial 'critical detachment.' Nothing is fully satisfying in our contemporary society; Motolese's 'non-poems' — let us call them 'thoughts' or 'fragments' — lack a 'definitive form' (the same goes for his pictorial works, uncatalogable, living in a continuous vortex of movement): does fixing a 'style' of writing or painting go against the attitude of 'openness,' of 'listening,' of 'critical distance'? Probably yes.
Human, All Too Human and Human Inhuman — let us not fall into the little game of comparison and inspiration. Motolese-Zakamoto does not quote or take up any famous text of the past; here it is a matter of a shared attitude.
Meanwhile, let us pull a great art critic out of the hat.
Thus Edoardo Di Mauro wrote of him, within a catalogue for a Turin exhibition of 2023 titled Media-Mente Falso:
(..) he has the ability to land hard blows on the hypocrisy of the society of spectacle and image that characterises our present dimension, using signs, symbols and 'vintage' inserts.
Collage and contrasts are scattered more or less everywhere in these written discourses too; for example in the sixth fragment, titled In the Trattoria, in which the 'retarded' return to the fore (see Vol. 1), with their backsides resting on a cushion of Mongolian sheep's wool, whose footnote on the word in question — today condemned as 'politically incorrect' — opens the field to combat, through social satire (very interesting is the highly personal definition Motolese gives of 'progress'). In other texts we again find these 'retarded,' incapable of seeing the new risks of commodification, consumerism, control: it is called, once again, 'capitalism,' the same damned monster, always it. The 'wicked' are named, by surname, puppets in their turn of a system, as in the hilarious text Scientistic Ring-a-Ring-o'-Roses Pandemonium.
The moving homage to a new love, the reflections on his own family, the references to situations that occurred with lifelong friends, the presence of the sea, are sudden pauses of silence from the chaos of our society; but the fear that they may be ruined by the world of the 'retarded,' or at least contaminated, is very strong (love, family, friendship — are they not, deep down, social conventions created by the same democratic-capitalist society?).
Stop! Conclusion! One could go on for much longer, but what would be the point — let us enjoy this book, let us run to see his paintings; we will come out of it more confused, certainly better and happier.
L’amicizia. Quando un tuo amico, che è anche uno dei tuoi artisti preferiti (pittore o meglio, creatore di immagini), ti chiede di scrivere la prefazione al suo ultimo libro, questo Umano Disumano Vol.2, venuto fuori immediatamente dopo il Vol.1, edito nella primavera del 2024 (con la prefazione di un altro comune amico, Luca Atzori, perfomer teatrale e poeta molto speciale, certamente originario di una galassia lontana), non puoi che essere felice.
Scrivere su Luca Motolese, in arte Akira Zakamoto, nato nel 1974 a Torino, è molto complicato, a meno che non si inizi propriamente dall’essere umano, quel Luca che conosco non da molti anni, ma in fondo è un po’ come se fosse sempre stato lì con te, in un modo o nell’altro: Luca, l’amico mitico di tuo fratello maggiore, Luca, il cugino più grande che ti porta in vespa per la prima volta (e tu hai undici anni).
Prefazioni precedenti (Vol. 1, L. Atzori). Ora, però, è necessario fare una sorta di premessa, che ha giàil sapore di una conclusione: il nostro Luca non è un “artista” e questo libro non può essere stato prodotto da un “poeta”.
Sono pienamente d’accordo con ciò che il giàcitato alieno Atzori ha scritto, introducendo il primo volume:
Lo sguardo trasversale di Luca Motolese va oltre l’appartenenza e l’identificazione. L’artista del presente è sempre anche un po’ quello del futuro, non ancora riconosciuto a pieno. L’artista ridotto a essenza, forse povera, come quelli senza spirito, cuore e denaro. (..)
La riflessione si conclude con un interpello necessario al Vate CB:
(..) Carmelo Bene, figura che anticipava questa “inappartenenza” alle arti. Con il suo teorizzare un cinema che non può farsi con il cinema, un teatro che non può farsi con il teatro, una pittura che non può farsi con la pittura (..).
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, porsi in “ascolto”, eterno ventenne. Il volume secondo si apre con almeno una citazione dallo Zarathustra di Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, il filosofo dell’impossibile, forse il più amato durante la nostra tarda adolescenza, insieme ovviamente ad Hermann Hesse, prima che piombi su di noi quello strano rossore sulle guance, vinti da un senso di vergogna, tipico di chi vuol dimenticare quanto invece siano stati educativi quei primi momenti di erotismo e di autoerotismo, chiusi nella propria stanzetta.
Nietzsche che non è filosofo, ma fa grandissima letteratura; per i letterati non fa poesia, ma è un magnifico filosofo. Lui poi è un filologo classico, per qualche anno lavora come docente universitario, prima di scoprire il vento o il fuoco wagneriano. Il ragazzo di Röcken, nel corso del tempo, è diventato una sorta di toyboy della cultura medio-alta, ha duemilacinquecento anni, ma resteràper sempre un inquietante ventenne pieno di sogni.
D’altronde anche la filosofia non si può fare con la filosofia. Non è un discorso intorno all’interdisciplinaritàai tempi della globalizzazione, no, qui c’è in ballo qualcosa di più profondo e sfuggente (anche il discorso sul Post-Modernismo non ha più senso, fatto oggi, nel 2024).
Semplicemente ciò che fa Nietzsche è quello di porsi sempre in “ascolto” rispetto alle cose del mondo, visibili/invisibili, e alla sua maniera è quello che fa il nostro Luca Motolese.
Inaugurazioni, prima e dopo. Durante l’inaugurazione di una sua recente mostra, con chi gli si avvicina, Luca evita di parlare di “tecnica”. Partendo da un riferimento altrui di un ritrovato o scoperto dettaglio che possa essere ricollegato ad un altro dettaglio e poi ancora all’infinito, fino ad arrivare al pittore tal dei tali del 1976, rispetto alla sua opera esposta (ad esempio Porco Nero), Akira-Luca interviene il meno possibile. Lo conosci? Ti sei ispirato a lui? Lo hai visto sui social, per caso? È sicuramente qualcosa che riguarda l’inconscio collettivo. Mentre l’improvvisato esperto esibisce le sue carte, Motolese è pronto a prendere tutto di lui, potrebbe succhiargli anche l’anima, e nel giro di pochissimo tempo inglobarlo in una sua opera, visiva o scritta che sia.
Le serate post-presentazioni, poi, sono un invito a Dioniso, alla vita e alla sana confusione. In ordine molto sparso, si parla di musica rock, di fumetti e manga, delle guerre nel Peloponneso, di amicizia, di post-femminismo e di robot, di planisferi, di genitori, delle canzoni di Piero Ciampi, di un film di Fassbinder, di retrogame e dei nuovi videogames, di Gaza distrutta, di pandemie e di restrizioni, dei figli, degli amori e dei viaggi in motocicletta, della prima invenzione tecnologica della storia (la ruota?), di Carlito Tevez, della regina africana di Nzinga di Ndongo e Matamba.
Parliamo del Vol.2? Ma lo stavamo giàfacendo… Anche in questo splendido e misterioso libro, Umano Disumano Vol. 2, emergono situazioni che compongono il puzzle della vita, di ogni vita possibile. Mettersi in “ascolto” significa contemporaneamente essere in perenne “distacco critico”. Nulla è pienamente soddisfacente nella nostra societàcontemporanea, le “non-poesie” di Motolese, chiamiamole pure “pensieri” o “frammenti”, mancano di una “forma definitiva” (lo stesso per le sue opere pittoriche, non catalogabili, vivono in un vortice continuo di movimento): fissare uno “stile” di scrittura o di pittura va contro l’atteggiamento di “apertura” di “ascolto” e di “distanza critica”? Probabilmente sì.
Umano, troppo umano e Umano Disumano, non cadiamo nel giochino del confronto e dell’ispirazione. Motolese-Zakamoto non cita o riprende nessun testo famoso del passato; qui si tratta di un atteggiamento condiviso.
Nel frattempo tiriamo fuori un grande critico d’arte dal cilindro.
Così scrisse di lui Edoardo Di Mauro, all’interno di un catalogo per una mostra torinese del 2023, intitolata Media-Mente Falso:
(..) ha la capacitàdi sferrare duri colpi all’ipocrisia della societàdello spettacolo e dell’immagine, che caratterizza la nostra dimensione attuale, adoperando segni, simboli ed inserti “vintage”.
Il collage e i contrasti sono disseminati un po’ ovunque anche in questi discorsi scritti; ad esempio nel sesto frammento, intitolato In trattoria, in cui tornano alla ribalta i “ritardati” (vedi Vol. 1), con il loro culo appoggiato su un cuscino di lana di pecora della Mongolia, la cui nota a piè pagina sulla parola in questione – oggi stroncata in quanto considerata “politicamente scorretta” – apre il campo al combattimento, attraverso la satira di costume (molto interessante la personalissima definizione che Motolese dàdi “progresso”). In altri testi ritroviamo ancora questi “ritardati”, incapaci di vedere i nuovi rischi della mercificazione, del consumismo, del controllo: si chiama ancora una volta “capitalismo”, lo stesso maledetto mostro, sempre lui. I “cattivi” vengono nominati, per cognome, burattini a loro volta di un sistema, come nel divertentissimo testo Pandemonium girotondo scientista.
L’omaggio commovente ad un nuovo amore, le riflessioni sulla propria famiglia, i rimandi a situazioni avvenute con amici e amiche di una vita, la presenza del mare, sono delle pause improvvise di silenzio dal caos della nostra società, ma la paura che possano essere rovinate dal mondo dei “ritardati” o almeno contaminate, è molto forte (l’amore, la famiglia, l’amicizia, in fondo non sono convenzioni sociali create dalla stessa societàdemocratica-capitalista?).
Stop! Conclusione! Si potrebbe andare avanti ancora per molto, ma che senso avrebbe, godiamoci questo libro, corriamo a vedere i suoi quadri, ne usciremo più confusi, sicuramente migliori e più felici.
Scrivere su Luca Motolese, in arte Akira Zakamoto, nato nel 1974 a Torino, è molto complicato, a meno che non si inizi propriamente dall’essere umano, quel Luca che conosco non da molti anni, ma in fondo è un po’ come se fosse sempre stato lì con te, in un modo o nell’altro: Luca, l’amico mitico di tuo fratello maggiore, Luca, il cugino più grande che ti porta in vespa per la prima volta (e tu hai undici anni).
Prefazioni precedenti (Vol. 1, L. Atzori). Ora, però, è necessario fare una sorta di premessa, che ha giàil sapore di una conclusione: il nostro Luca non è un “artista” e questo libro non può essere stato prodotto da un “poeta”.
Sono pienamente d’accordo con ciò che il giàcitato alieno Atzori ha scritto, introducendo il primo volume:
Lo sguardo trasversale di Luca Motolese va oltre l’appartenenza e l’identificazione. L’artista del presente è sempre anche un po’ quello del futuro, non ancora riconosciuto a pieno. L’artista ridotto a essenza, forse povera, come quelli senza spirito, cuore e denaro. (..)
La riflessione si conclude con un interpello necessario al Vate CB:
(..) Carmelo Bene, figura che anticipava questa “inappartenenza” alle arti. Con il suo teorizzare un cinema che non può farsi con il cinema, un teatro che non può farsi con il teatro, una pittura che non può farsi con la pittura (..).
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, porsi in “ascolto”, eterno ventenne. Il volume secondo si apre con almeno una citazione dallo Zarathustra di Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, il filosofo dell’impossibile, forse il più amato durante la nostra tarda adolescenza, insieme ovviamente ad Hermann Hesse, prima che piombi su di noi quello strano rossore sulle guance, vinti da un senso di vergogna, tipico di chi vuol dimenticare quanto invece siano stati educativi quei primi momenti di erotismo e di autoerotismo, chiusi nella propria stanzetta.
Nietzsche che non è filosofo, ma fa grandissima letteratura; per i letterati non fa poesia, ma è un magnifico filosofo. Lui poi è un filologo classico, per qualche anno lavora come docente universitario, prima di scoprire il vento o il fuoco wagneriano. Il ragazzo di Röcken, nel corso del tempo, è diventato una sorta di toyboy della cultura medio-alta, ha duemilacinquecento anni, ma resteràper sempre un inquietante ventenne pieno di sogni.
D’altronde anche la filosofia non si può fare con la filosofia. Non è un discorso intorno all’interdisciplinaritàai tempi della globalizzazione, no, qui c’è in ballo qualcosa di più profondo e sfuggente (anche il discorso sul Post-Modernismo non ha più senso, fatto oggi, nel 2024).
Semplicemente ciò che fa Nietzsche è quello di porsi sempre in “ascolto” rispetto alle cose del mondo, visibili/invisibili, e alla sua maniera è quello che fa il nostro Luca Motolese.
Inaugurazioni, prima e dopo. Durante l’inaugurazione di una sua recente mostra, con chi gli si avvicina, Luca evita di parlare di “tecnica”. Partendo da un riferimento altrui di un ritrovato o scoperto dettaglio che possa essere ricollegato ad un altro dettaglio e poi ancora all’infinito, fino ad arrivare al pittore tal dei tali del 1976, rispetto alla sua opera esposta (ad esempio Porco Nero), Akira-Luca interviene il meno possibile. Lo conosci? Ti sei ispirato a lui? Lo hai visto sui social, per caso? È sicuramente qualcosa che riguarda l’inconscio collettivo. Mentre l’improvvisato esperto esibisce le sue carte, Motolese è pronto a prendere tutto di lui, potrebbe succhiargli anche l’anima, e nel giro di pochissimo tempo inglobarlo in una sua opera, visiva o scritta che sia.
Le serate post-presentazioni, poi, sono un invito a Dioniso, alla vita e alla sana confusione. In ordine molto sparso, si parla di musica rock, di fumetti e manga, delle guerre nel Peloponneso, di amicizia, di post-femminismo e di robot, di planisferi, di genitori, delle canzoni di Piero Ciampi, di un film di Fassbinder, di retrogame e dei nuovi videogames, di Gaza distrutta, di pandemie e di restrizioni, dei figli, degli amori e dei viaggi in motocicletta, della prima invenzione tecnologica della storia (la ruota?), di Carlito Tevez, della regina africana di Nzinga di Ndongo e Matamba.
Parliamo del Vol.2? Ma lo stavamo giàfacendo… Anche in questo splendido e misterioso libro, Umano Disumano Vol. 2, emergono situazioni che compongono il puzzle della vita, di ogni vita possibile. Mettersi in “ascolto” significa contemporaneamente essere in perenne “distacco critico”. Nulla è pienamente soddisfacente nella nostra societàcontemporanea, le “non-poesie” di Motolese, chiamiamole pure “pensieri” o “frammenti”, mancano di una “forma definitiva” (lo stesso per le sue opere pittoriche, non catalogabili, vivono in un vortice continuo di movimento): fissare uno “stile” di scrittura o di pittura va contro l’atteggiamento di “apertura” di “ascolto” e di “distanza critica”? Probabilmente sì.
Umano, troppo umano e Umano Disumano, non cadiamo nel giochino del confronto e dell’ispirazione. Motolese-Zakamoto non cita o riprende nessun testo famoso del passato; qui si tratta di un atteggiamento condiviso.
Nel frattempo tiriamo fuori un grande critico d’arte dal cilindro.
Così scrisse di lui Edoardo Di Mauro, all’interno di un catalogo per una mostra torinese del 2023, intitolata Media-Mente Falso:
(..) ha la capacitàdi sferrare duri colpi all’ipocrisia della societàdello spettacolo e dell’immagine, che caratterizza la nostra dimensione attuale, adoperando segni, simboli ed inserti “vintage”.
Il collage e i contrasti sono disseminati un po’ ovunque anche in questi discorsi scritti; ad esempio nel sesto frammento, intitolato In trattoria, in cui tornano alla ribalta i “ritardati” (vedi Vol. 1), con il loro culo appoggiato su un cuscino di lana di pecora della Mongolia, la cui nota a piè pagina sulla parola in questione – oggi stroncata in quanto considerata “politicamente scorretta” – apre il campo al combattimento, attraverso la satira di costume (molto interessante la personalissima definizione che Motolese dàdi “progresso”). In altri testi ritroviamo ancora questi “ritardati”, incapaci di vedere i nuovi rischi della mercificazione, del consumismo, del controllo: si chiama ancora una volta “capitalismo”, lo stesso maledetto mostro, sempre lui. I “cattivi” vengono nominati, per cognome, burattini a loro volta di un sistema, come nel divertentissimo testo Pandemonium girotondo scientista.
L’omaggio commovente ad un nuovo amore, le riflessioni sulla propria famiglia, i rimandi a situazioni avvenute con amici e amiche di una vita, la presenza del mare, sono delle pause improvvise di silenzio dal caos della nostra società, ma la paura che possano essere rovinate dal mondo dei “ritardati” o almeno contaminate, è molto forte (l’amore, la famiglia, l’amicizia, in fondo non sono convenzioni sociali create dalla stessa societàdemocratica-capitalista?).
Stop! Conclusione! Si potrebbe andare avanti ancora per molto, ma che senso avrebbe, godiamoci questo libro, corriamo a vedere i suoi quadri, ne usciremo più confusi, sicuramente migliori e più felici.
Friendship. When a friend of yours, who is also one of your favourite artists (a painter or, rather, a creator of images), asks you to write the preface to his latest book — this Human Inhuman Vol.2, which came out immediately after Vol.1, published in spring 2024 (with the preface by another mutual friend, Luca Atzori, a theatre performer and very special poet, certainly originating from a far-off galaxy) — you can only be happy.
Writing about Luca Motolese, known artistically as Akira Zakamoto, born in 1974 in Turin, is very complicated, unless one starts precisely from the human being — that Luca whom I have known not for many years, yet who deep down is a bit as if he had always been there with you, in one way or another: Luca, the legendary friend of your older brother; Luca, the older cousin who takes you out on a Vespa for the first time (and you are eleven years old).
Previous prefaces (Vol. 1, L. Atzori). Now, however, it is necessary to make a sort of premise, which already has the flavour of a conclusion: our Luca is not an 'artist,' and this book cannot have been produced by a 'poet.'
I fully agree with what the aforementioned alien Atzori wrote, introducing the first volume:
The transversal gaze of Luca Motolese goes beyond belonging and identification. The artist of the present is always also a little the artist of the future, not yet fully recognised. The artist reduced to essence, poor perhaps, like those without spirit, heart or money. (..)
The reflection concludes with a necessary appeal to the Bard CB:
(..) Carmelo Bene, a figure who anticipated this 'non-belonging' to the arts. With his theorising of a cinema that cannot be made with cinema, a theatre that cannot be made with theatre, a painting that cannot be made with painting (..).
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, placing oneself in 'listening,' the eternal twenty-year-old. The second volume opens with at least one quotation from Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's Zarathustra, the philosopher of the impossible, perhaps the most beloved during our late adolescence, together of course with Hermann Hesse — before that strange blush descends upon our cheeks, overcome by a sense of shame typical of those who want to forget how educational, instead, those first moments of eroticism and auto-eroticism were, shut away in our little rooms.
Nietzsche, who is not a philosopher but makes the greatest literature; who, for the literary, does not make poetry but is a magnificent philosopher. He is, moreover, a classical philologist, working for a few years as a university lecturer before discovering the Wagnerian wind or fire. The boy from Röcken has, over time, become a kind of toyboy of middle-to-high culture; he is two thousand five hundred years old, but will remain forever a disquieting twenty-year-old full of dreams.
After all, philosophy too cannot be made with philosophy. This is not a discourse on interdisciplinarity in the age of globalisation — no, here something more profound and elusive is at stake (even the discourse on Post-Modernism no longer makes sense, made today, in 2024).
Quite simply, what Nietzsche does is always to place himself in 'listening' with respect to the things of the world, visible/invisible, and in his own way that is what our Luca Motolese does.
Openings, before and after. During the opening of one of his recent exhibitions, with whoever approaches him, Luca avoids speaking of 'technique.' Starting from someone else's reference to a found or discovered detail that can be linked to another detail and then on to infinity, until arriving at painter so-and-so of 1976, with respect to his exhibited work (for instance Black Pig), Akira-Luca intervenes as little as possible. Do you know him? Were you inspired by him? Did you see him on social media, by any chance? It is surely something to do with the collective unconscious. While the improvised expert lays out his cards, Motolese is ready to take everything from him — he could even suck out his soul — and, within a very short time, absorb him into one of his works, be it visual or written.
The post-presentation evenings, then, are an invitation to Dionysus, to life and to healthy confusion. In very random order, one talks of rock music, of comics and manga, of the Peloponnesian wars, of friendship, of post-feminism and robots, of planispheres, of parents, of Piero Ciampi's songs, of a Fassbinder film, of retrogames and new video games, of destroyed Gaza, of pandemics and restrictions, of children, of loves and motorcycle journeys, of the first technological invention in history (the wheel?), of Carlitos Tévez, of the African queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba.
Shall we talk about Vol.2? But we were already doing so… In this splendid and mysterious book too, Human Inhuman Vol. 2, situations emerge that compose the puzzle of life, of every possible life. To place oneself in 'listening' means at the same time being in perennial 'critical detachment.' Nothing is fully satisfying in our contemporary society; Motolese's 'non-poems' — let us call them 'thoughts' or 'fragments' — lack a 'definitive form' (the same goes for his pictorial works, uncatalogable, living in a continuous vortex of movement): does fixing a 'style' of writing or painting go against the attitude of 'openness,' of 'listening,' of 'critical distance'? Probably yes.
Human, All Too Human and Human Inhuman — let us not fall into the little game of comparison and inspiration. Motolese-Zakamoto does not quote or take up any famous text of the past; here it is a matter of a shared attitude.
Meanwhile, let us pull a great art critic out of the hat.
Thus Edoardo Di Mauro wrote of him, within a catalogue for a Turin exhibition of 2023 titled Media-Mente Falso:
(..) he has the ability to land hard blows on the hypocrisy of the society of spectacle and image that characterises our present dimension, using signs, symbols and 'vintage' inserts.
Collage and contrasts are scattered more or less everywhere in these written discourses too; for example in the sixth fragment, titled In the Trattoria, in which the 'retarded' return to the fore (see Vol. 1), with their backsides resting on a cushion of Mongolian sheep's wool, whose footnote on the word in question — today condemned as 'politically incorrect' — opens the field to combat, through social satire (very interesting is the highly personal definition Motolese gives of 'progress'). In other texts we again find these 'retarded,' incapable of seeing the new risks of commodification, consumerism, control: it is called, once again, 'capitalism,' the same damned monster, always it. The 'wicked' are named, by surname, puppets in their turn of a system, as in the hilarious text Scientistic Ring-a-Ring-o'-Roses Pandemonium.
The moving homage to a new love, the reflections on his own family, the references to situations that occurred with lifelong friends, the presence of the sea, are sudden pauses of silence from the chaos of our society; but the fear that they may be ruined by the world of the 'retarded,' or at least contaminated, is very strong (love, family, friendship — are they not, deep down, social conventions created by the same democratic-capitalist society?).
Stop! Conclusion! One could go on for much longer, but what would be the point — let us enjoy this book, let us run to see his paintings; we will come out of it more confused, certainly better and happier.
Writing about Luca Motolese, known artistically as Akira Zakamoto, born in 1974 in Turin, is very complicated, unless one starts precisely from the human being — that Luca whom I have known not for many years, yet who deep down is a bit as if he had always been there with you, in one way or another: Luca, the legendary friend of your older brother; Luca, the older cousin who takes you out on a Vespa for the first time (and you are eleven years old).
Previous prefaces (Vol. 1, L. Atzori). Now, however, it is necessary to make a sort of premise, which already has the flavour of a conclusion: our Luca is not an 'artist,' and this book cannot have been produced by a 'poet.'
I fully agree with what the aforementioned alien Atzori wrote, introducing the first volume:
The transversal gaze of Luca Motolese goes beyond belonging and identification. The artist of the present is always also a little the artist of the future, not yet fully recognised. The artist reduced to essence, poor perhaps, like those without spirit, heart or money. (..)
The reflection concludes with a necessary appeal to the Bard CB:
(..) Carmelo Bene, a figure who anticipated this 'non-belonging' to the arts. With his theorising of a cinema that cannot be made with cinema, a theatre that cannot be made with theatre, a painting that cannot be made with painting (..).
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, placing oneself in 'listening,' the eternal twenty-year-old. The second volume opens with at least one quotation from Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's Zarathustra, the philosopher of the impossible, perhaps the most beloved during our late adolescence, together of course with Hermann Hesse — before that strange blush descends upon our cheeks, overcome by a sense of shame typical of those who want to forget how educational, instead, those first moments of eroticism and auto-eroticism were, shut away in our little rooms.
Nietzsche, who is not a philosopher but makes the greatest literature; who, for the literary, does not make poetry but is a magnificent philosopher. He is, moreover, a classical philologist, working for a few years as a university lecturer before discovering the Wagnerian wind or fire. The boy from Röcken has, over time, become a kind of toyboy of middle-to-high culture; he is two thousand five hundred years old, but will remain forever a disquieting twenty-year-old full of dreams.
After all, philosophy too cannot be made with philosophy. This is not a discourse on interdisciplinarity in the age of globalisation — no, here something more profound and elusive is at stake (even the discourse on Post-Modernism no longer makes sense, made today, in 2024).
Quite simply, what Nietzsche does is always to place himself in 'listening' with respect to the things of the world, visible/invisible, and in his own way that is what our Luca Motolese does.
Openings, before and after. During the opening of one of his recent exhibitions, with whoever approaches him, Luca avoids speaking of 'technique.' Starting from someone else's reference to a found or discovered detail that can be linked to another detail and then on to infinity, until arriving at painter so-and-so of 1976, with respect to his exhibited work (for instance Black Pig), Akira-Luca intervenes as little as possible. Do you know him? Were you inspired by him? Did you see him on social media, by any chance? It is surely something to do with the collective unconscious. While the improvised expert lays out his cards, Motolese is ready to take everything from him — he could even suck out his soul — and, within a very short time, absorb him into one of his works, be it visual or written.
The post-presentation evenings, then, are an invitation to Dionysus, to life and to healthy confusion. In very random order, one talks of rock music, of comics and manga, of the Peloponnesian wars, of friendship, of post-feminism and robots, of planispheres, of parents, of Piero Ciampi's songs, of a Fassbinder film, of retrogames and new video games, of destroyed Gaza, of pandemics and restrictions, of children, of loves and motorcycle journeys, of the first technological invention in history (the wheel?), of Carlitos Tévez, of the African queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba.
Shall we talk about Vol.2? But we were already doing so… In this splendid and mysterious book too, Human Inhuman Vol. 2, situations emerge that compose the puzzle of life, of every possible life. To place oneself in 'listening' means at the same time being in perennial 'critical detachment.' Nothing is fully satisfying in our contemporary society; Motolese's 'non-poems' — let us call them 'thoughts' or 'fragments' — lack a 'definitive form' (the same goes for his pictorial works, uncatalogable, living in a continuous vortex of movement): does fixing a 'style' of writing or painting go against the attitude of 'openness,' of 'listening,' of 'critical distance'? Probably yes.
Human, All Too Human and Human Inhuman — let us not fall into the little game of comparison and inspiration. Motolese-Zakamoto does not quote or take up any famous text of the past; here it is a matter of a shared attitude.
Meanwhile, let us pull a great art critic out of the hat.
Thus Edoardo Di Mauro wrote of him, within a catalogue for a Turin exhibition of 2023 titled Media-Mente Falso:
(..) he has the ability to land hard blows on the hypocrisy of the society of spectacle and image that characterises our present dimension, using signs, symbols and 'vintage' inserts.
Collage and contrasts are scattered more or less everywhere in these written discourses too; for example in the sixth fragment, titled In the Trattoria, in which the 'retarded' return to the fore (see Vol. 1), with their backsides resting on a cushion of Mongolian sheep's wool, whose footnote on the word in question — today condemned as 'politically incorrect' — opens the field to combat, through social satire (very interesting is the highly personal definition Motolese gives of 'progress'). In other texts we again find these 'retarded,' incapable of seeing the new risks of commodification, consumerism, control: it is called, once again, 'capitalism,' the same damned monster, always it. The 'wicked' are named, by surname, puppets in their turn of a system, as in the hilarious text Scientistic Ring-a-Ring-o'-Roses Pandemonium.
The moving homage to a new love, the reflections on his own family, the references to situations that occurred with lifelong friends, the presence of the sea, are sudden pauses of silence from the chaos of our society; but the fear that they may be ruined by the world of the 'retarded,' or at least contaminated, is very strong (love, family, friendship — are they not, deep down, social conventions created by the same democratic-capitalist society?).
Stop! Conclusion! One could go on for much longer, but what would be the point — let us enjoy this book, let us run to see his paintings; we will come out of it more confused, certainly better and happier.