Ricordo di un topo rosso, Faust

Material and Support
Acrylic on Canvas
Dimension
200 x 150 cm
Year
2021
Project description

Goethe, in his Faust, explains how, during Satan’s dance, the protagonist dances with Fylgia. According to a Nordic legend, while Flygia was dancing, she regurgitated a rat. In the legend, the rat is grey whereas, in the painting it is red. I reframed this story transforming it into a distorted memory where the rat multiplies itself and, iterating, dances with the woman. This dance represents now an enjoyable memory but still altered by an unpleasant vision. The rats are dense and evidently shaped while the woman draws in an ocean of nothing. In the game of colors, the rats create light and dark contrasts, eroding the pastel tones of the pleasant initial memory.

01

Detail

A group of colorful mice.

02

Detail

What a false memory means.

03

Detail

Perhaps Fylgia would not have been happy, If she ha known what Faust remembered about their dance...