'Also, given the title of the show, which was what my father used to tell me when I was a child, it kind of meant that wherever you go, whatever you do, you always cry. And it was meant as a joke. I think it also reflects a lot on Italian culture and the way I was brought up. Therefore, within the pain, you find irony and comedy.'
- Filippo A.L. Cegani
Enari Gallery is pleased to announce You either cry here or there, a solo exhibition by Filippo A. L. Cegani.
Filippo A.L. Cegani's most recent series of paintings is a distant observation into post-digital Christian religious iconography. This series reflects the artist's recent rediscovery of Christianity and Christian emblems.
The reproducibility and immediacy of the religious icon in the digital era serve as a vehicle and metaphor for the religious figure's loss of value in modern times. They also immediately reference the post-digital Christian aesthetic, in which meme culture merges with classical iconography to reach a wider audience.
Famous phrases of saints and martyrs are clumsily photoshopped onto classical paintings or portrayals of those figures, reducing both the message and concept. This rapid availability, along with the lack of a larger context for these utterances, converts these philosophical pills into easily digestible social media material.
Cegani reinterprets holy religious cards found in churches and merges them with saint card reinterpretations from the digital world. This gives physical space to an otherwise ethereal message that the digital world contains. As a result, we may concentrate more closely on the messages themselves, allowing us to devote the appropriate amount of time to examining both the meaning of those words and the irony of such depth depicted in media.
The majority may find the juxtaposition of digital and classical humorous or comical. Still, the transnationality of this aesthetic, as well as its success on digital platforms, validates it as a real phenomenon that is transforming our perception of the Christian aesthetic.
The paintings' kitschy overtones and vivid highlights almost contradict with the classical iconography they depict; this glossy and plasticky quality complements the sarcasm underpinning this series of works.