Thinking about the piece of Fabrizio Cotognini and the unique artistic development reflected in his ability and ideas, we could miss the intention of the author himself, picturing him more similar to Boito than Goethe; more like an abstruse theatre than a tout court tradition. At the same way of the Italian author, the artist from Marche does not stop in front of detailed aspects; in fact, the desire for originality describes with the same love, the deformed, the unknown, and the classical purity. The mouldering ability of Cotognini’s technique wants to modify the past reality of the artefact, in order to correct a present state of the art; the sculptural nature is determined to share behaviours of faraway times. Habits and poses appear in the observer’s eyes in a cultured actuality which often blurs the poetical power. Chronological transplant more than materials: the feeling and thrill of fantasy become glory of shape and rhythm more than all; the classical style memory transforms into periods of strong and terrible images, in which the sharpest element originates from the most delicate features and the boldness flows from a satirical and bitter voice.

Defining in only one concept: draining beauty of a monstrum swinging between antiquity and present time. Prodigy, marvel, mirabilia; but also change, abnormal, hybridisms due to cultural, environmental, geographical and temporal causes. To profane the coherent and clear historical ideal with feeling frankness and impenetrable expressiveness devotion: Cotognini’s hand is led by vision of a reversed theatre built with devices and levers in the foreground; and it outdoes the obsolete idea, recurring in the expository activity, according to which “the most efficient control is secret and occult” (Antonio Valleriani). The main characters are not the ones of popular culture, theatre or literature; but the reasonings that link these characters to wise analyses on the stage-world experienced by the modern artist. That is why the showcases, filled with prints and manuscripts, seem to concentrate the very fine sense of proportion and documentary attitude – and that is also why the bright Heads, made of unrestrainedly precious materials, have different meaning; on one side they represent the hero in search of a sublime knowledge that will always be missed, an example of punished hybris;  on the other side they give voice to the requests, eternally innate in the human spirit and anti-sublime as the corrosive criticism of every value considered eternal.

Cotognini succeeded in the challenge of deep re-elaboration, going beyond the limits of theatre and Faustian tradition and reaching a natural erosion of the appearances. Not only explicitly – Reversed Theatre comes back into mind –, but also internalizing the deep literary and pictorial culture with extreme attention to studies and notions. The legend of Faustus, which led by thirst of knowledge sold his soul to the devil, has been reinterpreted several times in history. The artist, in order to represent the subjects, confronts the absolute crossing of a duplicity, a limit; the artist eternalizes his hybrid figures in a tense moment, that instant of division and incompleteness that comes before the historical and formal unity. In this sense, his works are Faustian even if they do not answer to a direct quote: as in every baroque tragedy, the contact and contrast between Good and Evil, martyr and tyrant, narrative and causal, metaphor and doom, happens in the same character – overlapping the universal.

The basis of the theatre and the architecture that becomes theatre comes back to life; the expositive space becomes a social entertainment stage – from the artist-subject to the universal, as stated before – and the pieces turn into readable lively allegories captivating the audience on an intellectualistic level, thanks to the use of the pathetic which has to move strongly individual affection. 

Communitarian typology from which personal myths rise and are promoted or reshaped by finding the interior life and knowledge: the exposition produces a theatrical piece as soon as the machinery twirls, showing in this way its own excessive care and pulling on the strings of the private confession. But everything is clear, sincere; finally, obvious, glaring as the many daily inputs. An edifying ratio inspired by the baroque fiction magic in order to anchor to the concept – more authentically – the real of our millennium.