Artwork description:

Title: The Indignation of Mars (Love Hurts)

Original work: The Indignation of Mars / The Punishment of Cupid

Original author: Bartolomeo Manfredi, 1613

Contemporary (digital) intervention: Slasky

Technique: Giclèe on canvas + digital intervention (neon "Love Hurts")

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Description of the work

In the original seventeenth-century version of The Disdaination of Mars, Bartolomeo Manfredi — one of the most important Caravaggeschi — stages a rare and powerful mythological episode: Mars, god of war, punishes Cupid, god of love, for his uncontrollable interference. The god is portrayed in the act of hitting the winged child, who squirms between pain and surprise, in a chiaroscuro full of tension and theatricality. The work is a visual allegory of the conflict between passion and violence, between instinct and rationality, between love and domination.

Slasky intervenes digitally with an action as simple as it is devastating: it superimposes the scene on a neon sign with the words "Love Hurts". In a moment, the entire reading of the work moves, folds, opens. Neon — pop, urban, contemporary symbol — is not just a title. It's a sentence. It is a sentence that is valid today as yesterday. The myth is updated, the archetype becomes an emotional chronicle.

Violence between gods becomes a metaphor for contemporary toxic dynamics. The fluo writing, apparently kitsch, acts as a visual and emotional short circuit: it brings the pain of the young Cupid back to a universal and modern dimension, made of wrong relationships, selfishness, invisible wounds.

This Love Hurts Edition is a time bridge between baroque and present, an operation that does not "update" the opera, but amplifies it, reactivates it. The classic is not untouchable: it is alive, and can still speak with new words.

« Art is not representing new things, but representing them with novelty »

Slasky is an established Italian artist whose works have been exhibited in personal and collective exhibitions at international level

The artist has the ability to blend classical works of art with contemporary digital art techniques. With its classic neo-urban style, it combines tradition and modernity, bringing the protagonists of original works of art into contemporary social and artistic environments.

Latest Exhibitions

Parallax Art Fair

Kensington Town Hall

Hornton Street

London, London

W8 7NX

2024

Exhibition Only

CONTEMPORARY VENICE

Palazzo Pisani-Revedin

S. Marco, 4013A , 30124 Venice, Italy

ART LAB

Benjamin Eck Gallery

Munich, Germany

2021

My Fair

The information Photography Art Fair Italy

Milan, Italy

Lausanne Art Fair

Beaulieu Lausanne

Booth 59

Swiss

Lille ArtUp 2021

Lille, France

StreetArt//UrbanArt

Legnano, Italy

2020

Woodward Gallery

WashYourHands Exhibition

New York City, NY

RedSheep Gallery

Work in Paper

Stockholm, Sweden

2019

Wopart Art Fair 2019 / Exhibition Center - Lugano, Switzerland

Lang Leve Rembrandt

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

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