| TECNICA | Hand-modeled terracotta skull sculpture with pure gold leaf inserts. Written with paint marker. Base in painted solid wood. "Cell" in iron, welded and aged with acid and flame. Cross drawn with ballpoint pen on Arches cotton paper of 300 gr. on wooden support. |
|---|---|
| DATA | 2020 |
| DIMENSIONI CM | 30,0 x 30,0 x 30,0 |
“Ego Te Absolvo” is an unique work. Realized for the project “Working Heads” exclusively for Restelliartco. The work with which Gabriele Donnini, one of the best known tattoo artists in Rome, participates for the first time in the Rome Art Week is explicit, without hypocrisy or compromises like its author.
An artwork that tells his experience, but from an absolutely original angle: looking at the prison experience not only through author’s eyes, but also and above all through the looks and feelings of those that inside the same cell had preceded him. In “Ego te absolvo”, the surface of the skull is covered with countless writings: the same ones that Donnini reports on a notebook by copying them from the walls of the cell during the period of detention: “Amo Mamma”, the inscription that in the prison is tattoed as a cross, becomes a way to ask for forgiveness from one’s mother and then “Don’t cry for me”, “The Fall of a man”, “Game over”, “Je ne regrette rien”, just to name a few.
The artwork becomes collective testimony and gives voice to those who, within those four walls, hated, were desperate, swore revenge, lost their illusions, simply did not pretend, had faith or converted, lowering his head in front of that cross which in the work is symbolically leaning against the iron bars that enclose the skull and which through the face of a suffering Christ speaks of understanding and piety: Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
