VIR TEMPORIS ACTI | MARCELLO MALOBERTI
Marcello Maloberti’s (Codogno, 1966) research is deeply connected to the meaning of words and the way they can interpret and express reality. The artist’s works, in which the concept of inversion prevails, represent a personal interpretation of the world around him.
VIR TEMPORIS ACTI is a performance—documented through photography—that was staged in 2016 during the inauguration of the 16th edition of the Quadriennale d’arte in Rome, held at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. During the performance, a young man (performer Alessandro Polo) sits on the floor, cutting out figures of sculptures from a selection of books on ancient art—Egyptians, Sumerians, Assyrians, Aztecs, Etruscans…—and then lets them fall randomly onto the floor, which thus becomes an unexpected canvas for a painting.
As the performance unfolds, a carpet of cut-outs accumulates, filling the room to the point where it becomes inevitable for them to be trampled upon.
The performer wears a pair of pants but remains bare-chested. This choice of attire is a communicative one, highlighting vulnerability not only towards the audience but also towards the act of creating art itself.
The setting of the performance is equally deliberate: it takes place at the foot of a sculpture, creating a contrast and fostering a dialogue between two formal expressions of the same artistic discipline, the sculptural one.
A central element of the performance is the scissors, an object recurrent in Maloberti’s practice due to its intrinsic function of shaping whatever it comes into contact with.
VIR TEMPORIS ACTI is therefore a work that perfectly encapsulates Maloberti’s poetics, demonstrating how art can shape the reality around us, even going so far as to transform the original function of objects.
Marcello Maloberti’s work is currently on display in Milan at PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, as part of the solo exhibition “METAL PANIC”, curated by Diego Sileo, from November 27, 2024, to February 9, 2025.
Marcello Maloberti
VIR TEMPORIS ACTI, 2016
Performance, Quadriennale di Roma
Inkjet print, 116 x 174 cm
Courtesy the artist and Galleria Raffaella Cortese Milano
15/01/25