HUMBERTO POIDOMANI. THE MANIPULATORS SERIES / SUMMER 2020

Humberto Poidomani ‘s latest series of works, The Manipulators, was produced in the summer of 2020 and visually expresses the crisis of our contemporary world, in its collapse and its decline.

His works play out in between irony and satire, emphasizing the fakeness of contemporary civilization.  The artist visually articulates what the German philosopher Sloterdijk states in his book The Political Epidemics: “cynicism is part of the malaise of culture”.

Poidomani’s paintings display grotesque scenarios of masses in struggle.  They point to post-apocalyptic settings dominated by visual dislocations and linguistic disruptions. Premonitory or autobiographical phrases appear, provocative statements and cataclysmic quotes from writers or philosophers, delineated through strong gestural lines in the manner of graffiti, intermingle with buffoon figures of turbulent lines.

The Manipulators convey the mistrust and sarcasm of the deceitful world we live in, underlining the alienation and schism of humanity. Cynical cartoonish characters, as brazen and malefic transvestites from a dark underworld, sardonically move their strings over powerless and disabled human puppets, barely rescuing their bodies from abysmal situations. They are apocalyptic images of the sinking spirit of our times and highlights the overruling structures of corrupt power of our post-human ecosystem. The Manipulators weighs in on the COVID-19 pandemic and its collective fears. The virus is visually embodied in an anthropomorphic ghost that swarms between the dark matrices of cities, their buildings, and alleys. It is our existence questioned; Humanity placed on its borderline with death.

Poidomani’s sculptures are made with found objects and post-industrial materials, and they possess a paroxysmal expressionism. The artist mixes materials and objects to the most extreme level, creating figures of derision and mimicry that defy aesthetics and expectations. All this underpins the blatant and damaging order of our contemporary hyper capitalism.

Poidomani highlights the unappealable paradigms of evil, be it religious, political, social, or economic power. He is a transgressor of rules who, daringly and unafraid in his paintings and sculptures, unravels the existential despair of modern man.

By Milagros Bello, PhD

Curator/art critic

Member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA)