IV edition - 2012

Luigi Benedicenti

Sara, le amarene e la bandana del Pirata Pacioccone

In interpreting Fabbri amarena cherries, Luigi Benedicenti, the undisputed master of hyperrealism, plays with a theme that is very dear to him, that of culinary sweetness, which he interprets poetically as a habit of the Italian middle class. In Sara, le amarene e la bandana del Pirata Pacioccone(Sara, theamarena cherries and the bandanaof the Pirate Pacioccone), therepresentation takes up the traditionof the “painting within a painting”,merging the naturalistic image andreality in a relationship that stressesits short-circuiting nature, thanksalso to the use of colour. The scenetherefore proposes an alienatingeffect, not so much through theoverlapping planes of the image butrather through the misalignment ofthe perceptive spheres, which are“sweetened” a priori by the Fabbriobject, the emblem of goodness and “genuine beauty”.Releasing the noetic abandonment ofthe artist’s vision is the very title of thework which, with a citing reference,underlines the meaning of the sceneset: the bandana worn by Sara is thatof the pirate Pacioccone, the star of acartoon series broadcast in Italy from1965 to 1976 to publicise Fabbriproducts, and amarena cherries, with their double figurative presence,become the sensory apex, theprotagonists that have an impact onthe senses and, for this reason, arethe undisputed symbols of pleasure.

Luigi Benedicenti