Colin Darke
Gli Dei Partono

November 3, 2012

Colin Darke has created a new project based on the correspondence between Gramsci and Trotsky. THE GODS LEAVE is a letter sent by Antonio Gramsci to Leon Trotsky in 1922, concerning information on the Italian Futurist movement, sculpted on 556 apples and arranged on the floor of the exhibition space.

Apples are used by Darke in an obvious reference to the still life with rotting apples painted by Gustave Courbet during his imprisonment following his participation in the Paris Commune. Darke argues that Courbet’s painted apples should be seen as a metaphor for the 30,000 Communards massacred by government troops during The Bloody Week (21 May 1871); he appropriates this metaphor to denounce the oppression of workers and the state violence that has characterized class society throughout history.

Furthermore, Gramsci’s letter is placed at a crucial moment of the twentieth century for the debate on the relationship between art and politics, a debate that according to the English artist, still remains to be resolved.


photo: Federico Cavallini

Italiano