My friend Currado Malaspina surrounds himself with a militia of wily women who, through an asymmetrical and difficult to describe kinship, deploy a malevolent force that share many of the same characteristics as electrical storms and storm drain floods.
I realize right away that I have not really shed any light on anything. An electrical storm and a storm drain flood seem on the surface to have only the word storm in common and therefore the analogies are, if not misleading then at least sloppy and over-written. But I can do no better than this and from a compulsion that I don't wholly comprehend, I insist upon these analogies.
I suppose the motif of mild disaster is what I have in mind. A man his age has no business getting involved, much less falling in love with these young beauties and one would think that after a few torrid trysts and wretched break-ups the man's stamina for pain might ebb. But no, we're talking here of an eternal man-child. The birds peck at his sleeve and he remains aloof to his own suffering and exposure.
Like an electrical storm there is volatility, excitement and the thrill of immanent danger that surround his dalliances. And like an inundated drain, there's filthy muck that the deluge must drudge up.
His muddled addiction to beauty is intoxicatingly toxic and if one reads carefully the cryptic annotations on his Baba Kama Sutra drawings it becomes clear that he himself is as addled as the rest of us.
I can no longer count how many times Currado, with tears in his eyes, returns to the refrain of our forsaken fate."Nous sommes seuls au monde," "the universe has disowned us and through its renunciation we are left to drift in misery and permanent exile."
This is how he explains his preoccupation with sex. "There are many worthy subjects but only two that are of any interest to me: Death and duress."
I can't decide if what he's saying is creepy or profound. What I do know is that Currado Malaspina is uncomfortably raw and brutal in his honesty. To me, that is what is redeeming in his fatally grotesque work.
These latest drawings are no doubt a requiem to a fading hope. They are neither wistful nor mournful but merely a gentle token from a lost time when people still had the ability to be physically, sensually and meaningfully connected.
I can no longer count how many times Currado, with tears in his eyes, returns to the refrain of our forsaken fate."Nous sommes seuls au monde," "the universe has disowned us and through its renunciation we are left to drift in misery and permanent exile."
This is how he explains his preoccupation with sex. "There are many worthy subjects but only two that are of any interest to me: Death and duress."
I can't decide if what he's saying is creepy or profound. What I do know is that Currado Malaspina is uncomfortably raw and brutal in his honesty. To me, that is what is redeeming in his fatally grotesque work.
These latest drawings are no doubt a requiem to a fading hope. They are neither wistful nor mournful but merely a gentle token from a lost time when people still had the ability to be physically, sensually and meaningfully connected.
