Enrico Corte (1963) lives and works in New York and Italy. Since his début he has assumed an antinomic role compared to the habitual method of doing art, choosing to show “what one does not want to see”, the dark side of the creative act which often borders on the opposite of creativity, i.e. self-destruction. He can be placed far from both the typically Italian taste for “lightness” and the search of scandal at all costs, finding instead unprecedented forms of plastic beauty, fatal fascinations in the face of the Unknown. By overruling the customary dictates of the art market, which want to see the artist specialize in a single “stroke” recognizable over time, Corte has intervened directly in social issues by means of a multiplying of styles, techniques and aesthetic solutions, sufficient to ensnare the attention of his public and drag it into the territory of vertigo and disorientation. The classical themes of fullness and emptiness, and the balancing of forms – typical of academic, sculptural art – undergo new metamorphosesbecoming tragicomic metaphors of a social malaise.
In this monograph on Corte an essay of Gianluca Marziani analyzes a selection of works through a “spectrospective” focus that nullifies conventional concepts of Evolution and Maturity. Under this interpretation, Corte’s work, even when based on an analysis of corporality, must be placed in a neural dimension, imitating the labyrinthine development which regulates the macrocosm of the most disquieting and obscure cerebral processes.