ELECTRIC THRONE | LUIGI ONTANI

A seductive and regal life size seat, Electric Throne is one of the – multiple – interpretations by Luigi Ontani, which for this occasion transforms itself into the most symbolic and least functional of seats, a throne.
A royal reference, symbol of an ancient and somewhat anachronistic power, the throne has all the richness decorations and materials that one would expect: covered in gold and finely crafted with meticulous detail.
Looking away from the precious materials glare, we discover a seat made up of unconventional elements: a fig leaf and legs represented by human and animal limbs.

Ontani uses the plastic and extreme ductility properties of ceramic, literally entering the sculpture, as an incorporation rather than a model. Parts of the artist’s body, hands, legs, feet lend themselves and are transformed at the same time, a reinvention that is not set, is not fiction, is not illusion, but is material and tangible.

The imagery is that of mythology, of archaic symbology and of the classical painting and sculpture canons, to which he skillfully combines oriental influences, the twist, the unexpected and current turning point is the interpretation, the performance that Ontani puts in place.
The body is like trapped in an electric chair, the upper limbs are in the obligatory pose of the death condemned. The throne is elevation but also a trap, it is an instrument of control, of metaphorical and real power over people’s lives.

The key to understanding Electric Throne is given to us by the title of the exhibition in which it is shown: AnamorPoses, from the term “anamorphism”, or the optical illusion by which an object is represented distorted, and to well see it, is necessary moving into the right position. Turning around the seat a reproduction of the Ontani’s screaming face is discovered on the back of the backrest. Instantly the glorious throne transforms into a lethal electric chair and the shoes, placed in a spiral around it, become the path to follow in that direction, alluding to how each person is “seated on his own death throne”.

With refinement, irony and a staging appetite, Ontani deals in a coherent and never predictable way with the dichotomy of life and death, power and submission, would it be of a sovereign, a superior entity or oneself. Trapped in a convention or mind constraint, but at the same time does not derogate from the possibility, or at least a wandering escape, of salvation, here in the ability to transform into someone else or another by oneself.

Luigi Ontani
Electric Throne, 2006/2007
Ceramic and metal, 158.1 x 69.2 x 68.6 cm
Installation view from AnamorPoses exhibition at Bortolami Gallery, NY

27/05/2023