2023-10-17 07:05:00
“I went mad with horrible intervals of horrible sanity.” The phrase fits the tumultuous existential and visual creation of Luigi Stornaiolo (Quito, 1956), great of his generation in America. Life and work gathered and dismembered. Outbreak of memorable chaos. The hidden faces of humanity: shadowy, ominous and at the same time laughable, laughable grotesqueries of a bizarre coven: his pictorial universe.
Art and its sinister shadow. What is the pain that runs through Stornaiolo and compels him to inflict his pain on others through his art? His illness that split his body in half, paralyzing one? His hazardous existential adventure: discoveries, losses, loneliness? I think that what is beautiful is also what is fearful that we can still endure.
The sinister is a condition and limit. Mark and germ of the power of his work. Sign of magic, mystery and fascination, source of his ability to enchant. Characters marked by helplessness, clinging to the clumsy noise of bars, cantinas, cafes… Ungraspable beauties of fireflies, abandoned walkers, weavers of smoke… Boredom, repulsion, emptiness, mirrors, tiredness of living…
I find Luigi. The tousled head – his abundant hair and the turbulent demons that populate it –, the coals in his eyes, the hands still eager on the blanket that covers his defenseless legs. I remind you something, should we laugh or pretend to laugh?
Mid-eighties of the 20th century. Guadalupe Huerta’s house. Celebration of life. Friends. Luigi among them. I tell him that I want to write about him and ask him when and where it is most convenient for him to meet to snoop around in his labyrinths. “Saturday, around six, in the cemetery,” he answers me, very serious…
“I anticipated you,” he tells me now, centuries later. “Which one comes first?” she concludes, grim, sad. Both, he answered, squeezing his cheek like Quixote secluded next to mine.
“The anxious time we endure from game to game / like a burning log that torments too much.”
#Stornaiolo #Comercio