Visual grammar is – and will ever be in future – one of the great challenges and issues under discussion about interpretations of art as a social and philosophical phenomenon. To decrypt aspects of evolution that relate closely to artistic language is not to fail to comply with the moral commitments of a modern, conscientious society that looks to artificial intelligence for reasons for redefining its craft precursor, balanced on a knife-edge between the golden calf of digital virtual reality and the encephalo-tactile dimension.

LE MAMELON ENCHANTÉ (The enchanted nipple), a copper engraving made by Albert-Edgar Yersin (1905-1984) in 1947, is the surreal cue for us to venture into a Cabinet of Curiosities encompassing both the oneiric dimension and tactile reality, where what is at stake is the individual’s civic response or civil responsibility within a society of nothingness, one of inhibitions that is increasingly less inclined to exercise a critical capacity: an anonymous society in which theories and theorems brutally supplant corporality.

Following this thread, the Wunderkammer is disseminated as in a love letter, attempting – much like a silent cry of love and of life – to give meaning to the works selected and put on show for the benefit of visitors, even before that of the artist himself. And we may be permitted to wonder whether and to what extent, in this scale of values, globalisation, as asphyxiating as it is critical, has managed to coax man to make his way back within himself.

Mario Casanova, Bellinzona, 2023.
English translation by Pete Kercher

Sam Kautsch (1947), Das Paar, 1975 approx. Installation, assembly of objects, variable size. Private collection, Switzerland.