gianlucacrudele

[gianlucacrudele]

On the way from the greek-roman god Priapus to garden gnomes. I wonder how many Karens out there have filled their gardens with dicks unknowingly. 

[gianlucacrudele]

“Zhi the outlaw” - on view from May 27 till June 20 at Square Street Gallery, 21 square street, Sheung Wan.

In the picture “Zhi the outlaw would rather eat mandarins than listen to them” - 100x120cm, acrylic on canvas

[gianlucacrudele]

‘The sky looks grim’ - on a random rooftop in TKT, Summer 2020

[gianlucacrudele]

#opensource #imagedatabase #public

[gianlucacrudele]

They came from the future

[gianlucacrudele]

[gianlucacrudele]

Opening reception Friday June 21st 7 PM

On public view from Saturday June 22nd till Friday July 5th

NIDO ASIA 177 Hollywood Road, 2/F, Unit 4-6, Lee Wah Mansion, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

[gianlucacrudele]

About a year ago, a word which I had never taken in great consideration, revealed its secret to me. "Morbid" in English has a rather macabre meaning, describing things that are disturbing and deadly. So it does in Spanish, Portuguese and French - the reason being their common derivation from the Latin word “morbus”: illness.  I started wondering then why in my language -Italian- the corresponding word  “morbido” just means “soft”, with no apparent memory or residual link to its unpleasant origin. The answer of this bizarre question is to be found in the shift of perception about suffering started in the late Medieval year and more specifically in the image of the dead flesh, softened by the illness, reducing the body in ruins.

Since then there has been something in the idea of decay that Italians hold dear, a mystical sentiment, a sense of nostalgia that over the centuries has become a formidable source of a more profound, lyrical interpretation to the world. And I as well hold it dear: welcoming those inevitable moments of pain easing my consciousness and pushing it to a state of malleability.

"Mente morbida" is the state of the convalescent mind, softened by the illness, now hypersensitive. It is a lens intensifying the world around, making its colours more vivid, its shadows sharper. It is a perceptive state into which childhood memories, readings, remote images and everyday life convey in lyrical compositions, portraits of different facets of the "self".

[gianlucacrudele]

“The Idol” - 100x75 oil on linen, 2018

[gianlucacrudele]

[gianlucacrudele]

The mountain trees do themselves harm; the grease in the torch burns itself up. The cinnamon can be eaten and so it gets cut down; the lacquer tree can be used and so it gets hacked apart. All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless.

(trad.) Zhuang Zhou, Zhuangzi, 3rd century BC

[gianlucacrudele]

“History, so far as it serves life, serves an unhistorical power, and thus will never become a pure science like mathematics. The question how far life needs such a service is one of the most serious questions affecting the well-being of a man, a people and a culture. For by excess of history life becomes maimed and degenerate, and is followed by the degeneration of history as well.” - F. Nietezsche, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, 1874

[gianlucacrudele]

First picture ever of a black hole, credit: EHT

[gianlucacrudele]

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would have not been inducements, but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

[gianlucacrudele]

“City man” - 100x150 cm oil on canvas, 2019