Andrew Gilbert

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The Scottish artist Andrew Gilbert crosses the Alps with his “glorious” army: December 12, 2013 inaugurates at the Studio d’Arte Raffaelli of Trento the exhibition of about fifteen of his works, made on the occasion of his imagery conquest of the Castle of Trento, in exhibition until 28 February 2014. In front of his works, set in places and periods of military history on the border between invention and tradition, the perceptions are mixed: you can feel complacency for the uncomfortable satire, undisputed protagonist of every episode narrated in his epic, repulsion for the sense of the grotesque that permeates the scenes and the background of war, or you can stop to reflect on the phantasmagorical recovery of a past continually reread and, then, rewritten by the artist. As a contemporary storyteller, Andrew Gilbert, like his declared precursor Alfred Jaar, stages a series of heroic conquerors, who, however, unlike the theatrical Ubu, have the very precise cartoon identity of the artist himself, who chooses them as alter-ego. It is not a question of self-deception, but rather of an ironic awareness of its role as spokesperson of the present through the illustration of a war story at once real and visionary. From acrylic to watercolors on paper, to sculptural installations, for this exhibition destination it was the Buonconsiglio Castle to unleash the imagination of the artist: Andrew Gilbert, aka Hannibal, is ready to conquer him at the command of an army of elephants.