SHUNGA is the CACTyou! Fanzine #4 by Massimo Vitangeli

The CACTyou! Fanzine number 4 will be released at the beginning of November. This is entirely conceived and made by the Italian artist Massimo Vitangeli.

The artist himself so explains his artistic-editorial work:

[…] Shunga is the extension of In Cold Blood, a work comprising a series of erotic prints presented in my one-man show at the CACTicino in October 2010. Shunga is a Japanese term that means literally “image of Spring”: Shungas are works with an erotic topic that are now considered to number among the most significant expressions of the Ukiyo-e – or “floating world” – art movement from the Edo period. At the time, they were considered to be pornographic images that dissented from the dogmatic neo-Confucian morals supported by the caste of the Samurai that controlled Japan’s central government. Shungas were expressions of an ideology and hint at certain analogies with the contemporary world, with its echoes of the philosophy of the flow and of transformation opposing the heavy oppression exercised by social and political scales on the individual’s role and identity. For this and other reasons, as a hostage of destiny, I decided to conceive a fanzine here, in Ticino, between the echoes that slide immanently from the slopes of Monte Verità, which is so dear to me. So as to feel myself a little like a travelling bookseller and lender of erotic publications for a readership of art lovers and to have Shungas in my warrior’s trunk, preserving me from destruction and leading me to victory, as used to happen in the Edo period. And also because of the fortuitous coincidence with the exhibition Shunga. Art and Eros in Edo Period Japan at the Heleneum in Lugano, which opened in October 2010, shortly after mine. But above all to venture where our consciencedoes not take us, with an astigmatic view of reality.[…]

Massimo Vitangeli [translation Pete Kercher], 2011

October 31st 2011 <