'Roma portrait #1'
'Shame on who can sing while Rome burns, if he doesn't have the soul and the heart of Nero' (Lamartine).
It is not the shame that overwhelmed me when the Roman forum sudenly stood in front of me after a small staircase ... These were the tears. So many drama in so much beauty ... I had to retranscribe it in my language of iron and emptiness, the intensity of what my passion for our humanity had taught me.
A simple portrait, but poetic and powerful; Violent and bewitching. The different faces of Rome in this steel portrait: Ancient Rome, Imperial Rome and Religious Rome ... The Coliseum and the Roman Forum, the Basilica of St. Peter and the Vatican; Piazza Venezia and Altare della Patria; The fountains of Piazza Navona ... surrounded by the seven hills that dominate the eternal city!
But beyond these details worthy of a tourist guide ... We can erase everything we know and see only the matter that comes alive, the story that repeats itself, the poetry of forms to a such degree that one could look at this sculpture upside down!
Pieces of raw steel, oxidized, sanded and assembled at a distance from each other to form a sculpture in volume, in high relief, hanging a few inches from the wall with a simple hook.
Artist : Frédéric Daty
Size : 138 x 106 x 16 cm
Year : 2019