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Paola Santucci
wrote of him in 2007
Caputo da Roma or the game of the ironic ambiguity
Moving closer to the
production of Caputo da Roma is not only a linguistic task of
deciphering, but decryption of its hidden meaning; fiction
"stage" if you will, where what you see is the decoration of a
deeper meaning. The costume –the instrument of the Master’s
activity-helps to "pretend" the character, the actor
becomes something else. Similar is the speech or the Rebus
series.
The Latin translation of the Mask and the person is in this
series, whose title is already in itself disavowed by the fact
that the personage portrayed all have a name, fiction is in the
literal distortion of faces, even though we mean the different
physiognomic identity through the different joints of its
geometrical features obtained with tight and compact layers of
colour, the end result is an iconic fixity, by Totemic idol,
better still, by "mask" (Alice, Erda,Jeanne).
The game is in solving
the puzzle, as well as in the translation of an ironic key,
sometimes desecrating-and even more often-grotesque, character
portrayed, Jeanne (d’Arc) is closed in his helmet where the
inferior part of the "hidden" - never a more appropriate name to
identify the tight structure of a warrior tool that
metaphorically each of us wears--a small-mouth alludes to the
vox Dei, but in the colourful open space which splits his face
to her inner voice stops on the lips of a second small mouth,
too tight ,as well: it costs the revelation-rant of his
inwardness, and not have to be a messenger of God to find within
yourself the duplicity between the vox animae and vox populi.
Melody is a tribute to the great Picasso, to those African masks,
to that primitive world that interested the great Spanish artist;
form here comes even Paloma. Luther, then, is really Luther or
Martin Luther King? both share the same commitment of preaching,
a breath that emanates from the open mouth, an African dressed
up, looking not at us, but elsewhere, the truth is always
elsewhere.
And Hillary, Byzantine
Basilissa, is perhaps the queen Theodora mosaic of the famous
march of the church of San Vitale in Ravenna? The "imperial"
dignity of Hillary’s portrait (but will not be the wife of
imperialist Clinton?) is underscored by the many "coins" golden
effigies mostly male profile, as in the coinage of ancient Roman
times, but stands the doubt that those men's profiles can be
claim of an aristocrat, and old wealth . Hillary is bejewelled
and piercing at the nose brings her back to us, to our time: the
decoration of which she is adorned with the ephemeral of the
person. The truth of the gaze is doubled; the play the most
ornate glasses prevents us from reading into his eyes, a mirror
of the soul par excellence, therefore, no relation to the direct
communication of the interior: externality is the habit worn to
conceal one's self, as a society want.
the game of the ironic desecration ever revealed is
themanipulation of the great protagonists of the epic of
chivalry: We allude, in this case, to Parsifal (the Perceval of
Chretien de Troyes, the source of Wolfram von Eschenbach
Parzifal from which
Wagner drew the book for the opera of the same name),a knight in
search of the Grail, metaphor of mystical elevation from a
courteous knight to a Christian who overcoming goes through the
wall of his defeats (by which Caputo da Roma tighten the face of
his hero) will be able to earn the grace of God. Will it be
enough to tighten his eyes wide on the unknownable feelings?
The moon-like face of
Orlando might be alluding to the place where the paladin Astolfo,
met with the evangelist John, according to God’s will, recoups
his lost mind of the hero because of his insane jealousy of the
love felt by Angelica for the saracean Medoro .
Orlando, the baby Orlando, does not open both his eyes wide: the
madness of love does not consent him to recognize that only half
of its own existential dimension, in the emptiness of the
compact sphere, abstract,in which we are helpless puppets.
In the erotic dreams of a priest the enamelled parts of the
mosaic, are used to define the image of the protagonist that,
naked, repeatedly hides the sinful genitals, and sometimes even
his own face:
is the erotic obsession, the stronger the more forced is the vow
of chastity. You may try to hide yourself in front of the
exigency of the physicality that assails you, you can try to
recover your rationality
if the king of animals par excellence, the lion, instils in you
its strength;at times overwhelms you, others, accompanied by his
female remind you that sex is procreate, not solitary empty
talk;
redemption can take place-perhaps through the painful experience,
the Crucifixion, the invocation of “Father, Father why have you
forsaken me”? But all around the repeated cry “I am thirsty,
thirsty” is still requested, still research, relief from Pain,
from the
conflict.
The Last Supper sees
Christ surrounded by the apostles, no facial features identify
them, the Eucharistic bread on the table is marked with a small
cross, then the bowl, the jug of wine, two fish, a symbol of
early Christian iconography, they tell us the letters of Greek
word IXOYM (fish), the initial expression of “ Jesus / Christ /
of God / Son /Saviour ”.The moment depicted is one in which
Jesus speaks the words “one of you will betray me”; in the upper
part the crescent moon in the solar disk is inserted, two
symbols that, according to the Synoptic Gospels, recall the
eclipse which darkened the land for the death of the Redeemer,
whose sacrifice was announced clearly during The Last Supper.
But the serpent of evil is there, creeping, blue, below the
half-moon table, woven in a checkerboard boxes bicoloured whose
game is in progress, and Judas, the traitor, the mask, the
double-dealer is touched by the blue of the snake. Can "redemption"
and sin coexist together? Truth and Deception?
Finally, in the sculptures of Caputo da Roma, , the game of
ambiguity (the ego and its double: the Mask), the puzzle (the
Sphinx), seems to subside in the union of the minds, a title
which the teacher favours exorcising physical entanglement of
the two bodies as it does not always lead to the intermingling
of souls. Peace,the reduction of the contrast between Nature and
Ego, between instinct and creation is in the ashes of our Being,
divided in two in life, reduced to matters to be enclosed in the
Urn: Heaven on one of the sources of this"neomedieval" object
ceramics, and the Sun in back are finally Light and Fertility of
Nature, the only place where the redemption occurs: the nature
is, seems to suggest-Caputo da Roma in his delicate etchings by
the titles consistent with the subject-selected, in that land
which does not betray, do disguise as it precedes us, is
perennial, does not need to be interpreted, does not not declaim,
does not disguise; the Nature is the cosmos that spends (the
Down), but does not change its functions, is a land (Spring )
from which rise towards the sky, on slender inflorescences,
delicate flowers (I am even Les fleurs du mal);. is water (Metamorphosis),
Where, in its silence, absent any declamation, its mute
creatures slide into their slow and hidden navigation.
Translated by Erminia
Paola Maria Merolla
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