Cutting the Head OffFrancesco Moratti · 2022

It is the last in a series of works that engage with art history (in this case Judith and Holofernes) from a contemporary perspective. Despite not having any other objective than making it, I am interested in constructing an image permeable to the present and reality and experimenting with how a surface (painting) can awaken something profound, while the same scene has the potential to signify differently in various contexts. First drawn with a finger on a cellphone screen and then transferred to the canvas, in an explicit dialogue with the digital image and with a question about painting in relation to new media and ways of seeing and translating reality. The mounting system incorporates the idea of painting as a three-dimensional object with two faces (canvas stretcher) in contrast to the screen, the idea of weight against the digital archive, and the accumulation of time in a rock against the idea of layers. Things reveal to us what it means to cut the head off.