Jean-Michel BASQUIAT - Francesco CLEMENTE - McDERMOTT & McGOUGH - David MACH - Tony OURSLER - A.R. PENCK - PIERRE ET GILLES - Andy WARHOL

MEMENTO MORI nm. invar. Object to remind us that we are to die, often a death´s-head.

On the occasion of the FIAC Fair from October 10 to 15, the gallery has presented a group exhibition dedicated to the Memento Mori. Emblem and symbol of the memento mori, the skull will be at the heart of the show through more than twenty works, especially selected among the strongest creations of the artists of the gallery.

Since the Middle Age, the memento mori remains one of art´s main themes, while the skull, which is a death´s allegory and an emblematic representation of wisdom, surrounds all the artistic fields. By that time, sculpture, painting and literature defined and underlined the diversity of a concept that the following epochs will try to confine to a unique and very Christian interpretation. The image of the skull did not intend to shock people, but rather to remind them the fleeting aspect of life and the vain nature of all objects made by human beings.

Until the 19th century, Death, by its omnipresence, did not generate the same fantasies that it does today. Thus, the memento mori should not be considered as a morbid vision or even a macabre fear, on the contrary, it expresses an unconditional love of life, an unlimited craving to live to the full each single moment, because everything is perishable and each moment is ontologically fleeting... Life is even more beautiful when you are perfectly aware of its transience.

Eros and Thanatos also hang over the memento mori. Sexuality as well as death are private events, hidden behind closed doors. Freud was the first one to realize that the human psyche as a battleground between the fundamental and irreconcilable urges of sexuality and death, or as he explained so well, "between the life-enhancing drives of the pleasure principle and the destructive drives of death instinct". This fascinating ambivalence is one of the major components of memento mori.

The works presented in this show offered all a brand new and contemporary vision of memento mori, classical figure of the history of art, in a diversity of expression peculiar to each artist.