“Oh you who have healthy intellect,
Admire the doctrine that hides
Beneath the veils of this strange verse”.
Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto IX

There is a place for art – that which constitutes its most authentic soul – that borders on the unspeakable, with narration suggested but never spoken, with investigation into structures strongly steeped with psychological and symbolic repercussions.
All the art of the Twentieth century has demonstrated vacillations, missing elements and doubts in an exemplary manner, and the century facing us has immediately appeared webbed with a whisper of inquietude.
In this manner, the past quickly gathered up its phantasms, remodeling them in 3D, outfitting them with smooth, metallic and shiny chrome, or projecting them into a virtual reality that has lost its original impossibility.
The relationship between man and nature, the analysis of debate, of encounters and clashes, have quickly discovered new theaters for competition to bring out on stage, and with new words we have started asking ourselves, once again, who we are. Meat, is Robert Gligorov’s response; meat to be approached as a material that can be sculpted. Something to be modeled, to exalt in the beauty of a formal perfection that seems to distance every hint of precariousness.
Looking back in time, this human-animal-vegetable mixage that has characterized the first phase of Robert Gligorov’s artistic production can be connected with several ancient engravings dating back to the IV-V century B.C.: the so-called “grilli” (crickets), zoo-anthropomorphisms or vegetable elements, which take their name from writings by Plinius the Elder, who was in turn referring to a drawing made by a certain Gryllos, an Egyptian artist.
Perhaps that which we can see is a Monstrum, a prodigy, something extraordinary and close to the divine, which blends without solutions of continuity past, present and future, bringing to life a singular Paleo-cybernetic aesthetic.
Because Gligorov is a Baroque soul who blends the merely organic data of existence with his own lyric reasoning, transforming the beat of a small wing into music, and immediately afterwards searching for bodies capable of passing through the surface, and therefore the rule, the established law. He obscures everything with a refined white paint containing all colors, an amniotic color that retraces the threads of memory and requires patience and discipline.
This overturning of order coincides with an aesthetic investigation aimed at the sublime: catharsis and stupor, here is the result of a visual structure that retraces the primordial sentiment of vision in order to put into action atavistic mechanisms of reaction.
Gligorov’s most recent work continues in the direction of an aesthetic charged with symbols and metaphors, but which celebrates a return to a singularity of the body, almost a search for truth that chooses to forcibly return man to the center of the inquiry and his relationships with the history of the present.
It is an inquiry of literary iconography. Not by chance does Robert Gligorov choose to move starting from the apex of narrative structure (that of Dante’s Divine Comedy), in order to define the conceptual scaffolding of his artistic discourse, as always strongly imbued with an inescapable aesthetic law.
Hell is the place for the heaviest doubts, where real data manifests itself incontrovertibly before the human eye, crystallizing appearances among fallen angels and false myths.
Purgatory is the wait, the total dedication, the powerful desire to retrace the right distance from things in order to finally return to oneself.
Paradise is announced by a sound that blends the automatism of a gesture with new hybridizations which – at first glance – have overturned anthropocentric conception.
Mechanics and nature, new symbioses, the indication of a path followed through the rituality and repetitiveness of the gesture.
But no independence is possible, because even here the thread of willingness is manipulated by able and superior hands. This is the new toy of the Manipulator, who chooses not to appear. Behind the curtains, the scene unfolds.
From Ovid’s Metamorphosis to Blade Runner, passing through medieval illuminated manuscripts, and between these two banks Gothic representations: capitals, bas-reliefs, frescoes that often decorate cathedrals and churches, in exemplary retaliation.
Here the triumph of this mix of sacred and profane, human and animalesque that characterizes Gligorov shapes itsmetaphor anew, directing it towards an iconography with meta-Christian tones: the dove with which the artist has already created a self-portrait in a hybrid image, now reacquires its integrity, projecting an image that is doubly new, of completeness and at the same time altered. Robert Gligorov rewinds the thread and draws to himself this iconographic and cultural charge that still contains the capacity to surprise and dialogue: the explosive charge of the rite has never been defused, and here nature – always feared – is sculpted with force; here the animalesque part of man is bowed by man himself, the first to fear his own multiform identity.
Transformation is the sentinel of development, of the presence of pulsating energy, of strength that has yet to express itself.
Replicants or centaurs, clones or minotaurs, have substituted the labyrinths of Knossos with those of electronic microchips, and continue to wander around its interior in the hopes of finding a way out.
Perhaps this time it is hidden behind beating wings.

D: Recently you have been accused of disrespecting animal rights, forcing animals into environments that are not appropriate for them. But there are others who see in your work an authentic sensitivity towards nature. How do you explain this contrast?

R: If my work were taken strictly at face value and isolated from its context it could well appear as you pointed out earlier. But it incorporates something beyond the search for a shocking image, or one that simply makes a strong impression.
The force and violence that I use in my images are the result of the fact that the artwork needs to reach beyond certain confines in order to be seen. In a certain sense the artist aims further, extending the confines of that which is visible and tolerable. He “unveils the invisible,” as they say. If he doesn’t do this, he passes by unnoticed, crushed by other media.
I do not explicitly declare myself for or against certain social or religious positions. I am interested in apprehending the contradictions of the fact in and of itself, and highlighting the problem.

D: Therefore you don’t believe that art and the artist must bear a certain social responsibility… Is it better simply to let the spectator draw his own conclusions?

R: It is also important to avoid risking that one’s work becomes too enigmatic, too cryptic. A sort of monologue where the artist is only talking with himself. Art requires the public’s participation. I don’t like artwork that is too complicated, too abstruse. I love synthesis in an object.

D: Perhaps one problem is that the art-loving public is small in number with respect to the general populace, and that artists do not have a well-defined role within society, unlike in other centuries (for example during the Renaissance, or during the 1700s). Under such conditions, do you think an artwork’s force is a little lost?

R: Yes, absolutely. But art has a potential that the other media do not possess. It is free, spontaneous, uncensored. On the other hand, in the industry every product, even the most transgressive, is picked over, designed and created in order to reach the highest possible number of people. This is not what happens in the artistic environment. For example, my artwork could never be placed anywhere but in an artistic environment, both because of the way in which it is created, and because of the subjects and the method with which it confronts certain themes.

D: One oft-discussed theme for critics and intellectuals is the influence of 9/11 on creativity. Do you believe that September 11th has transformed our imagination, art and culture?

R: Yes, I believe it has. I too, for example – and without having made an explicit decision – felt the need to deal with social themes that were no longer connected with myself, but with others and the world at large. I began to imagine possible social/political scenarios, often paradoxical considering that which may be our future and for that which is taking place right now. In addition to this, there is another, extremely important factor: important events, even those that are tragic and dramatic, often become vital energy for creativity. All one need do is consider the bombings in Spain that inspired the great masterpiece Guernica, or the passion of Christ, which has been represented by countless painters over centuries. In a certain sense, the strength of some artwork is directly proportionate to the gravity of the events that they address.

D: Among your most recent works there are also some very beautiful paintings. Do you believe that painting still has a role and voice when compared with other media?

R: Honestly, no. I paint because I love to paint – the composition, the drawing, perspective. All things considered, today for me painting is a kind of purification. It makes it possible to slow time down. Painting allows me to take a break. I would say that my painting is more personal than artistic. When I want to communicate or express something objective I prefer to use other media.

D: Among your latest works there are also pieces with birdcages and aquariums. More than sculptures, they seem to be truly alternative ecosystems.

R: Exactly. They are vital environments. With these works I attempted to create possible life alternatives. The point was not to cause useless suffering in the animals, but rather to create different life hypotheses. And at the base of these works of art there exists a new idea of sculpture. I tried to create sculpture that was no longer static and monumental, but dynamic, alive.

D: How do you think one must act and react with respect to the masters of the past?

R: I am not interested in single works of art. What interests me is an artist’s attitude; his ability to overcome certain limits, to change the rules. For example, I am not drawn by Pollock’s individual works of art, but rather by the capacity he had to break through the established barriers in the world of painting. I am interested in the courage and audacity of artists to open up new inroads to creativity.
In life you don’t need to do the same thing until you die. You need to be able to stop. Art is not life, but simply one of its many faces.

Pierluigi Casolari