The Fall of the House of Usher meets Leatherface meets La Specola wax anatomical collection in Florence. These sculptures and assemblages are fascinating and disturbing, perfect for our age. Showing a remarkable degree of technical expertise, we marvel at their creepy elegance. Appropriate for the basement of the Vatican, already filled with magically mimetic body parts from centuries of saints and popes, these works hover between the world of art and the spectacle, plus low-rent appeal, of the side show. The work of a true original, they chart their own relentless path to a mash-up between all the saints in Rome crossed with a Dickensian horror of unimaginable cruelty.
The path of the individually-minded, committed artist is a lonely one. The art world can be notoriously bound by trends and fashions. The use of human remains can be highly problematic for legal/logistical reasons (you need a special license to import human remains into the UK, for instance, and it’s costly) as well as for the viewing public which tends to waver between horror, sentimentality and ghoulish fascination. This work will only find a home where it’s specificity speaks for itself. At once a plus, the artists’ desire to brook no interference, it also means charting a very clear course, the rest of the world be damned!

You have a very clear, complete and impressive body of work. You are working with really powerful images, and the amount of effort and skill put in is very evident. The gory, shocking and cathartic – it is positively medieval. I guess I hesitate a little, as I survey the current art world and wonder what it can tell us about ourselves in this moment in time. What can the life of a saint mean to us? Do we still have states of ecstasy? Phrases like ‘You’re a saint’, ‘I was ecstatic’ are tossed around quite casually. Is today’s saint a religious person, a third world aid worker, a tireless bureaucrat, an exposer of hypocrisy? Horror and gore are generally not for me. However, Frankenstein is one of my favorite books – because the monster wants to be human, he scares everyone away and has to be destroyed. Your work has its audience. However I think the work itself may be a little isolated in the past. But then again, every year more of the ugliness and profundity of death becomes hidden from our daily lives, and given that, I encourage your work.

These sculptures feel like abject versions of work by Duane Hanson or Ron Mueck. They are exceedingly macabre, which is precisely your point.

I like seeing the incorporation of newspapers and/or magazines in “The Ecstatic.” It brings the work into the present time and comments upon our own era. The body in this piece seems almost robotic, perhaps futuristic, transforming the work into a portent or warning of sorts.

Choosing how to display these pieces will be important, which brings me to “Christmas Past, Present, Future.” Devising a whole environment for your wax figures seems like a good direction to head. However, you do not want to dip into the world of something tawdry and pedestrian such as Madame Tussauds, so tread with care.

Since you discuss the importance of dolls in your artist statement, I cannot help but think of artists who use such stand-ins often in a sexual bent, such as Hans Bellmer’s “La Poupée”; Morton Bartlett’s “Family Found”; or Elena Dorfman’s “Still Lovers.” I believe you are tapping into the same strain of human curiosity, desire, and even perversion as these important creators.