I'm evolving as fast as I can!

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11065400845577295292011-11-03T16:13:26.567-07:00I'm evolving as fast as I can!Mister Fixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07816993213787678054noreply@blogger.comBlogger11100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106540084557729529.post-48250302083164713422010-04-27T08:21:00.000-07:002010-04-27T08:26:07.167-07:00Translated DecodexHere is a quick and dirty translation (thanks to Google Translate) of the Decodex that is included with the Codex Seraphinianus.<div> Thanks to Rob Budrick for the OCR'd text! :)</div><div> </div><div>Sorry about the formatting. ;)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>-----------------</div><div><div>(Colum aligato to No 27 and No 28 of "The Signs of Man") The publisher readers Other publishers have in their catalog on "Atlantic Codex" by Leonardo da Vinci; I'm proud to have my necklace signs of man Codex Seraphinianus. The "Seraphinianus" was designed and written by a scribe today in a room in Rome from 1976 to 1978. My first intention was to propose a gloss to writers condegni from Barges at Calvin but I realized it would be a mistake to introduce explanations in a work encyclopaedic in nature, created to explain itself. Stormed a convent, and meet the basic needs of food and plunder, Hun or some other barbarian ignorant of certain alphabets will be entered until the Library, and there will be peeled with a wonderful illuminated manuscript. I want the reader to browse the Codex Seraphinianus''as that warrior; or as a child still has not learned to read, but rejoices dreams and fantasies that the pictures suggest. He sometimes thought reprint, facsimile edition, voumni of the eleven thousand "Ch'in-ting Ku-chin, T'u-shu chi-ch'eng'' ("Collection of paintings and writings of ancient and modern period compiled by imperial order") but I feared the frustration of those among the members of my club, unaware that the ancient Chinese. The two volumes of this compendious Codex Seraphinianus " written in an easy italic print. Semitic, will be easier and transparent for everyone. Like seeing two quatrains and two triplets, not difficult to recognize the sonnet so the reader will find it hard to recognize in the Codex Seraphinianus "a metric from encyclopedia, with a first volume devoted to the natural sciences (botany, zoology, teratology, chemistry, physics and mechanical) and a second dedicated to human sciences (anatomy, ethnology, anthropology, mythology, linguistics, cooking, games, fashion and architecture). It is clear that the Codex Seraphinianus''belongs to a wealthy family of companies and mirages which includes the "Naturalis Historia" Pliny, "De Rerum Natura, Lucretius'', the Speculum maius''''Vincent of Beauvais, up to the 'Encyclopedie' of Diderot and d'Alembert or the most recent and valuable efforts of my colleagues Giulio Einaudi and Livio Garzanti. Looking at the partitions, the reader will perhaps have the impression of listening music without words of knowledge. Planches in the Codex Seraphinianus "'reflected a science and a world with similar and dissimilar from ours, as rumors of the same declination. This leaflet is not intended as an introduction to flying, but a kind of packing slip. Well then will the reader to tear it, so any contamination with the virus alphabetical the wonders of the Orbis Pictus Seraphinianus mate. Cover of the first edition of the Codex Seraphinianus published by Franco Maria Ricci in 1981. Alessandro Riva The secret strength of some inventions are in their ability to persist in our deep memory, even against our regardless of the will and spend the years, and together in the vague knowledge that they will never understand whole or, in any event still fail to embrace the everything from A to Z, to store them in our memory as a fact accomplished, in short, to make her epistemological own - as if, to them, could not be never had reason at all, as a force that draws us in virtue of its capacity of sottrarcisi in passing continuously surprising us each time with new inventions, new tricks, or new Unexpected tricks of language, which forces us constantly reexamine all, and what it implies (the world which he describes with his value systems, its language, etc..) with new eyes, according a parallel reading, if not alternative, which previously had no taking no account. One of these is the Codex Seraphinianus, mysterious hybrid more than a thousand heads, whose phantom twenty-five years - since, that was published for the first time in Italy, for types Franco Maria Ricci '- is estimated with unsuspected lightness between lovers, scholars, bibliophiles, critics, writers, linguists, historians, mystics, artists, herbalists fantastic Scientists pseudoalchimisti, and then experts Occult cryptologists, esoteric, complottologi, ufologists and so on, and almanacs fantasizing, involvement in cross- of every aspect - even the most unexpected - Scientific and humanistic culture, as well that mass culture, not excluding the most bizarre and obscure. See, for believe the dozens of Internet sites dedicated to this creature is omnivorous and comprehensive, the numerous unofficial sites, those dedicated to the futile attempt (albeit pursued with consistency and determination matched only by their absolute and total futility) to decode and transcribe into one of the many known languages 2, accomplices the many false trails built with internal hoc by the author, such as the famous (but unreadable) pseudostele Rosetta placed with wicked fun, within the same volume. Twenty-five years, the pages Codex is completely unknown the general public, and also (semi) unknown in their real essence of physics, even to most fans, of bibliophiles and scholars - because of deliberately elitist character and sectoral the elegant and expensive editions of Franco Maria Ricci, and rare foreign editions appeared in the meantime foreign markets' - continued to adopt their peculiar and highly alienating suggestion, through the story of those who possedeva4, or had chance to view from somewhere true, or through the photos on internet the rare few reproductions catalog the even more rare appearances in exhibitions government ', but mainly through texts, articles, essays or analysis that concerned - so, in fact, through the paratext the book (the supreme paradox, for work without a real text, if not, precisely, that, illegible, written serafiniana language, to be known almost exclusively through its paratext) - in short, means that infinite tam tam that always accompanies in a disordered and highly chaotic and seemingly random, but for this more branched - More on that later accumulation as a result of an orderly direction (like what happens on Wikipedia, "The free encyclopedia" where not the case Codex has long been a motto all its) - the emergence of some genuine "cases" worldwide. At first, he wanted Luigi Serafini even omit his name from title or the cover of Codex: wanted, according to the letter, the suggestion work that was, so to speak, write, disappear, leaving only a trace in the body and between the lines (illegible) work itself, as the anonymous author the songs of Ossian, or that, which then Codex is often compared, the famous Voynichb manuscript, or the infinite herbals and medieval codices and incunabula, the traces of the perpetrators of which are lost in the folds the centuries. But the desire to be part work, to be literally camouflaged inside, far from being motivated by snobbish pose of modesty or from one of those witty pensatine type conceptual often characterize the biographies of artists in the age à la page current was actually the first, and already well firmly structured event an attitude of inevitable svagatezza and disregard for what we call "Real" nature of mimesis and confusion life lived and imagined, between physical existence and mental experience, imagined, dreamed, between work and biography: what feature, even then, the inevitable fate Artist, in which, increasingly, the fragile boundary between what we call biographical reality and what we call, Instead, (re) construction of literary, psychological, imaginary staff tend inevitably to overlap and intersect unabated. Are testimony - even if worth something - biographies listed some of his (rare) or in some catalogs of his interviews, which state roughly thus: "Luigi Serafini lives between Rome and Milan, in an imaginary city where Street Pipe comes out in Piazza Cordusio "(but sometimes' the author has replaced "Via Condotti with" Via del Tritone, thus remaining, as we shall see, closer to Rome of his childhood, and that of creation Codex, rather than the more traditional Rome and canonical and we would perhaps expected, then, even the replacement of Piazza Cordusio "with" Buenos Aires " as an example of the Milan hybrid, chaotic and so little "Milan", where Serafini has not only study but also set some of his recent works; Corso Buenos Aires as the site of "Spleen" Milan ", as defined the same artist ', "the walk on Sunday afternoon, 'window-shopping', the look without buying, ethnic dummies, lemon yellow hours, now blacks chocolate bars on the sidewalk, "where" is beautiful controsole walk with others, seeing without being seen. " Another biography 9, a bit 'less synthetic, says instead: Luigi Serafini was born in Rome in 1949. For several years carrying out various activities in preparation Villa Borghese, in the area that goes Pincio by up to Deer Park, and includes the Borghese Museum and Zoo . On October 6, 1955, playing ball, falls on the glass and cut his hand: decides to start drawing. Between 1956 and 1958 more than six hundred images recopies from books, encyclopedias, lecture notes, newspapers. After school in a college of Piarists now in decline, falls of Architecture, where he became interested in pentominoes, golden sections and labyrinths applied. Between 1971 and 1973 traveling to America, Europe, Middle East and Equatorial Africa . In 1976, after closing the door house, he decided to write an encyclopedia that stops accidental 1978. Since 1979, carries out home Rome and sometimes in Milan. " For Seraphim the artist who, as written by Vittorio Sgarbi, "lives in a perpetual state of mirage 10, also his biography becomes field of play, rumor, legend, fantastic reworking of a posteriori as a function of daily life alienating and reversal (or simply by revisiting a another view) of reality. For example, reads as the artist tells the time of his birth, in an interview to Armando Adolgisol ' The biographies are exemplary, in general, trying to understand the image he himself, or wants to give of himself, the artist But in the case of Seraphim, there is another reason for leaving, even before the work Thus the "text" in the sense seraphim close, from what is around you: biographies, So, yes, but also dedications, exergue, quotes scattered in various books and catalogs. Well, and again, you should be distributed, to understand the work, from paratext Seraphim, who can say that sometimes more and speak more clearly do not speak as his - generally illegible - texts. Just paratext in fact, are constantly camouflaged the clues to the origins of his work, his approach to work and the relationship same with reality and with the formation of his poetic universe. "This work was made aware of the fiction that there is a reality, "read at the opening of a catalog. "Therefore, any reference to imaginary people or events is to be considered real chance. " It is no coincidence, then, that even a trivial fall playing football is traced the origin of their ability to design, and even the act of coming into the world will become subject transfiguration fantastic and fun narrative elaboration. We still Once aware of the overthrow, and However, no less clearly hallucinating, terms of what we would call today reality and fiction (ricordiamocelo when return to address the issue of Codex). "Seraphim, the artist strives to upset conventions, to produce visual routes collision between distant languages and alternative to build a striking disorder finds that the first inhabited areas of cultural politely kept distance between them, " wrote Achille Bonito Oliva. "The eye the artist sees and provides. Part of statistics and then look removes paralysis conventions and introduces surprise and derision. The world is not seen as a place frozen, but as an area of imploded emotions and therefore able, in Somehow, and altered to produce high temperature glow ". To keep paratext seraphim 14 is still a catalog law, mo 'dedication Final: "In memory of my father, an engineer dreams, which in 1953 built a TV in the room near the kitchen. " This story (I apologize to readers, and with them the same Serafini), is told fully, it is very symbolic that construction of metarealtà serafiniana whose understanding is essential to understand the genesis of Codex. "My father," she explained some years ago the artist in an interview " "Built with his own hands a television. The made at home with CRT, screen and everything. I followed the construction of this monster mechanical, with trepidation and a bit ' distress. " "I saw literally the birth TV near the kitchen when Gradually the lit vacuum tubes " tell in another interview, issued to Patrizia Valduga 16. Era - is worth emphasizing - 1953 and the Fair Milan, the first experimental television broadcasts had reached, after Turin, Rome also "the television culture" does not still had stormed into our lives, with its cargo of a spectacular cheap and fictionalization of real. "I remember the first images when finished installing the thing. Were reversed . So for a bit ', we had to watch the TV instead. " This anecdote, said, is indispensable for understanding the genesis of Codex, since closely and has the flavor of imprinting seraphim unquestionably is, in fact, the (first) construction - or reconstruction - of a world on the contrary, the Seraphim child: a world where reality and fiction confuse and chase each other relentlessly, but never meet, because one is the mirror (perfect reversed) the other; a world on the contrary, therefore, inevitably suspended between reality and fiction, closed inside the screen of a television, yes, but - is worth emphasizing - not a TV any means an instrument craft built by his father, "the engineer of dreams" (Which, it is said, built a house submarine), which, as a novel Cagliostro appears able, in the imagination child (but already fatally seraphim) at will to reshape the real. After all, even today, all we could ask and the child Serafini What is the straight world and which is reversed? And where reality begins and ends our private individual myth, the our own reconstruction of the world, of life, of reality itself? How could he, Many years later, wrote to Italo Calvino About Codex7, "images of the existing twist and overlap their linkages ", thus creating a parallel universe alternative ("our" universe, in fact, made from impressions, and projections, and illusions, and patterns compared to what we call real), other than to speculate and one shared by others: a universe that when the recognition is described or represented by others (in this case becoming an "other" universe, a universe, in fact, always "parallel" but fatally different from ours), whenever there produces surprise, wonder, excitement (As is done precisely to us all Viewing Codex), but also a subtle thick with anguish - are not so much as Calvin also wrote, "from its diversity from ours, because of its similarity " - At least in its basic structures. Because it is not so much to deny reality, but to apply a point of view another, alienating than traditional or shared by all. It is no coincidence, then, the love of seraphim some extraordinary makers and assemblers languages parallel, as of Fosco Maraini Fanfole, which can be found here and there, in paratext seraphim, references and citations (We traveled for thousands of years between splagi / down criptocorni down in streets, / brushed away the Arcagi s Mongi teloprenici and quidiosi ./ Help, horror! The stomach, the smebri / s'aggrecciano enfani druniti on, or fall bustrenici the affebri / viturpi with tubes and allupiti . . . ). It is not the end, even this one poetry perfectly understandable, though written in a language apparently geezer, other than our own? It is not, including this language, like seraphim, syntactically and structurally consistent not only perfectly logical, although very different from ours? It is only a matter of displacement: the displacement point of view, precisely what we call real. It is this creation (and, consequently, of recognition) of another perspective on reality, a fundamental question, that allows us to understand the genesis of works considered "visionary" (Calvin) "Fantastic" (Sgarbi, Zeri), or "hallucinatory" (Peter Schwenger), such as that we are dealing with. And that is why the story TV can be reversed - to symbolic level - key to understanding even the genesis of the Codex: why is the first performance of another point of view as possible on real is the creation of a new world, built ad hoc measure of Serafini, Serafini of that child Meanwhile he studied diligently to College and spends his summers in the countryside a great-aunt, whose house was full full of memories and souvenirs from from its thousands of exotic travel (the track of which perhaps has been in thousands of small, quirky iconography alien or exoticized Codex). And this child Serafini, even then, perhaps, beginning to regret not thinking of having a little blood 'of the anarchic madness, very fin de siecle eccentric yet highly inventive and even mechanics - the kind of mechanical craft, a little 'na?fe fundamentally fantastic, the period in which there more inventors, not only engineers a bit 'obtuse but fitted master and degree of specialization abroad - in short have already assimilated into their DNA that gust of madness over the top and somewhat bizarre that has always crossed, as a karst river, his family. Not is no accident that even then, the child Serafini - Or the subsequent reconstruction of their childhood by Seraphim adult (bottom of little importance) the everyday was a receptacle of all kinds adventures of highly symbolic and real irrreali or that they were: "One day, as miracle, came to the house of an aunt an astronaut American, accompanied by Mayor Rome, home precisely where he was born because previously belonged to his family. It was the living personification of history that, for a whim of fate, I looked out the dining room ", will tell Serafini yet to witness the This anecdote, apparently surreal (I imagine that the astronaut looks out in the kitchen with plenty of space suit and helmet, as in children's film Zathura, Space adventure), the artist has shown me, One day, the plaque on the facade remained of her aunt's house in Via Tevere, in Ludovisi district: "Here was born Michael Collins / intrepid astronaut / mission Apollo I1/Primo Man on the Moon. " The childhood memory for Seraphim, unrolling so, so simple after all, with the naturalness of the great adventures fiction, through "normal" flavors Child, in its staff transfiguration, we are just history, myth, legend. "The Arrive soit que la réalité trop complexe pour la transmission oral ou écrit. Seoul to the legends peut exprimer d'une facon here embrasser puisse le monde entier "reads mo 'exergue of the catalog The Seraphim Theatre pittura19. So, with remarkable ease and a touch of guasconeria, Serafini biography in real and imaginary seem to merge - in a sort of terrain vague, in a no man's land where is difficult to trace the sheer biography - historical anecdote and reversal all seraphim, the terms of real. He knew very well describe this continuous mixing of true fiction and imagined reality, Pino Corrias, in a beautiful article published in "La Repubblica" for twenty-five years of Codex 20: Luigi Serafini is neither in heaven nor on earth, but at the end of a corridor black inside a green room walls, where the chairs hanging from the ceiling. Flap between the alphabets, and plays with the clouds, like the characters Ink by Raymond Queneau, one Flowers blue. In a surreal night away, thirty-months, he imagined a writing (perhaps) do not read and a world that (perhaps) not seen with men become Tong, eggs flying, trees upside down, zoology plant, insect and crocodiles. He made an Encyclopedia wonderful, surprising and useless resembling As to the real world is like a dream the mystery of mirages ". And, to decrypt this encyclopedia - Codex, AP point - Corrias found a "key": "And the story of its history. The very funny Adventures of Luigi Serafini. Born architect House imaginary, but then becomes artist and traveler for three trips, as three waves of fate, America, East Africa "- and here I leave you to read later, Corrias text, which tells precisely the "Very funny adventures" by Luigi Serafini by land and sea, starting in across America as he recounts himself, looking Utopia (Utopia a word that I saw for the first time with my own eyes during a long journey American in the early seventies. I saw architecture "organic" for Frank Lloyd Wright, as nell'intrinseca utopian dimension of American society, Standing in between quell'altalena and work space, nature and artifice. Since I learned how Utopia is a food, an essential nutrient "and return below the basic meaning covers for Seraphim, the very concept of Utopia), and ending with a rather Serafini arrested by a squad of soldiers Congolese, and finally released because believed mad, perhaps because they too had including what he later realized George Sweet, when he saw for the first time Codex, and he described the "Journal" with lapidarietà brilliant: "You could doubt him, but his sparkling wit '21. On the other hand, trace, in this tourbillon real madness and crazy reality, the real from the false, the plausible from what is rather unrealistically adherent to or lived is real, as well as difficult, absolutely irrelevant for it is precisely this short-circuit between real and imaginary, or rather between adventures and real ability to look at that same reality from another point of view, a viewpoint imaginative and alienating, so to make them seem crazy, incredible, paradoxical, that is the secret of creation of meta-reality that typically serafiniana, where fantasy becomes as miracle, reality, and vice versa reality seems to vanish and instead dissolve in they are thin on facts and myths legends, becoming vague sequence fattoidi of taste strangely unreal. What is certain is that Luigi Serafini start typing the Codex at age 27. It is 1976, and the artist is in Rome, in a attic on the fifth floor of a dirt called Via Sant'Andrea delle Frate, number 30, in the heart of Baroque Rome, where even the streets and buildings have preserved the names and memories of the Counter Popes: The Way crosses the Largo Nazareth, home to the College still Nazareth, who attended the same Serafini from elementary to high school, and basically emerges, strangely enough, on a large building austere bearing a plaque that reads: "Here lived and died / Gianlorenzo Bernini / sovereign art / which bent / reverent / Papi Principles Peoples. " Side, Via Capolecase, there is the palace of the Propaganda Fide, and not far from the church Borromini, although incomplete, of Sant'Andrea delle Frate. Around, a crossroads of streets that bear names and suggestions bestiary of strange seraphim (The names have to do with us, as in which our subconscious reacts "says later, and not surprisingly, the artist in an interview issued hyacinth Pietrantonio22 ): Via del Tritone, Via della Salamandra Palazzo del Bufalo, on the door of the latter, still stands a good head buffalo that seems straight out from a page of Codex: expected to see her off, at any moment, stone, become flesh and blood stand out flight. From his attic, then, Serafini dominates this crossroads that reminds his childhood (in the house to side, at number 24, lived the rest of his life, and when one is moved, it did to go in the adjoining building: where glimpsed the idea, made material, Physics of travel only as a displacement mental. In between, however, for Seraphim, there has a degree in architecture and many Travel around the world that we discussed earlier). From his attic then, and roofs, on which sometimes vague bringing the girls to drink tea as in a wacky adventure worthy of Mary Poppins, Serafini dominates this crossroads road: see the domes, many of Rome century, but see above, and close, the extraordinary inventions Borromini, Baroque contortions lantern the church of Sant'Andrea delle Frate, cloister in which he was baptized, and where a series of lunettes still bears the trace of frescoes which celebrates the life of St. Francesco di Paola and own one of these frescoes, looking at today, seems to bring us back a strange iconography serafiniana; represents the saint on top a promontory and, before him, a herd of cows that enter the water, and heads, swimming toward the shore. "For Collum suspense ferunt your IUSS iuvenci famuli ut, longa et celeres aequora secant "23 states the inscription that accompanies it. Singular coincidence (but there are, then, the coincidences? Or even the herd of cows amphibious marked individually, without know, Serafini child's imagination?) between this image and obsession - born from one of the many "fantasy extravagant and valuable, labyrinthine and shiny " in the words of Giorgio Manganelli 24 - of Serafini adult to breed, and specifically 25 for the cow: cow transformed hybridization, metamorphosed; made oviparous, plant, invertebrate, mollusc and whatever, in many paintings and drawings later, especially sculptures (the famous Bay windows, but also the most recent Cowburger in love, cow with human hands and early turned into hamburgers, made for the Cow Parade in Florence 2005 and later subjected to repeated vandalism) . Iconography, the cow and her male counterpart, the bull, the other Party has a long tradition, Starting for example from Greek mythology: think of the legend, the concentration Europa, ravished by Zeus in the form of bull and transported by sea to Crete: what Europe brings to mind our origins, albeit by mythological. Time Serafini conceived as a series of bay windows, Europe had taken shape a curium sa collective phobia, that of the so-called "Mad Cow" on which the artist played in a manner fun and irreverent, at its staff Milan (the public was invited to join as a tragedy old, hiding behind a mask the shape of a cow: postponing, mentally, that cow mask that just puts it in Prometheus, when tired to flee from the anger of Hera, screams all his despair to the heavens: "Can you hear me? I am the girl you cry / I, masked horns, heifer! ") 26. To get back to us, or rather to Seraphim pre-codex is here, then, from the fifth floor an attic in Via Sant'Andrea of Fratta - where some time has established the architecture together with "A member who in his spare time catching cobwebs lies on the white canvas and immobilizes with the fixative "27 - that Luigi Serafini begins on a Sunday in 1976, to draw and write the Codex. Begins, almost by chance, to design and writing the Codex, that undoubtedly become his Great Work, the summa its poetic, visual and philosophical quell'enciclopedia the absurd, the fantastic, impossible (but made with "obstinacy by amanuensis "as written John Mariotti, as well as precision and accuracy of the design of details, the same internal logic syntax, so that the set is absolutely and completely plausible in the eyes of anyone) is that the Codex Seraphinianus, that "a vast encyclopedia of world hypothetical somewhat similar to Earth, with many creatures that resemble humans at various levels, and other creatures extremely weird moving here and there " as written by the scholar (and Pulitzer Prize) Douglas Hofstadter2s carefully annotated and commented in the "Handwriting meticulous cursive and agile, and (we admit) clear that we are always a hair from being able to read and yet there escapes in every word and every letter " (Calvin) 29. "I remember the day and circumstance" Seraphim to tell about Pino Corrias 30 Birth of the Codex. "I called a friend and tells me to take that step go to the cinema. And I, without knowing why, I say: no rest at home, I do encyclopaedia. And when I put the phone down, really begin to draw. Begin by a man, then a screwdriver, leaf, a gear. And I write, row after line, imaginary captions, slipping in automatic pause and white signs dancing .. . A table after another, without missing ever, for days, weeks, months. " Thus, with the same ease with which the world real is transfigured, in memory of the artist in history, myth, legend, its fantasy world that is born, yes, imaginary, crazy, utopian, distorted, sometimes a bit ' disturbing, "Teratology" (Calvino 31), a world in which history has lost its way natural to find another, parallel and unstable, ever-balance paradox and fiction, "in a climate of rationalism transfigured, invented, released by processes mentally different than usual (...) in each spark invention, each flame found a suggestive and disturbing " (Zeri32), yet also "fully understandable and, so to speak, livable; not at all surreal, as might appear at first: "a parallel universe, governed by its internal laws, strict and infallible " (Sgarbi). Certainly, in analyzing the Codex, the first approach is the most obvious and immediate and the structure of the Encyclopaedia canonical, ie "images of books science, the chapters on anatomy of the eye, stomach, heart, or books natural sciences and botany "as Sgarbi wrote again, or rather, as instead emphasized Zeri, a work that "Summa resembles a medieval division for subjects, classes and subclasses: Codex tackles fact, in its rigorous structure, all categories of knowledge, both in the field of natural sciences in human terms - although, as we shall see, with continuous changes and contamination between one and another, so as to talk of description of "another world", a "universe alien "or" parallel ". Flora, fauna, physical, mechanics, anatomy, mythology, writing, food, clothing, strings- architecture: every aspect of this mysterious parallel universe here is gutted, described minutely described, and (albeit to a language unknown to us) analytically described in the Codex, in a surprisingly stirring constantly, unceasing and mutual of all categories and all aspects the real: "Like Ovid's Metamorphoses, Serafini believes contiguity and the permeability of each area of existence " Calvin again emphasized. And a certainly bizarre world, and equally certainly surprising and unexpected, Seraphim of this, where the fish are shaped of eyes that come from the sea surface as the periscope of a submarine, where the plumed can have three heads or tails the shape of a lance to pierce the eggs (but in the subsequent development of art serafiniana, in which the simple design and teratological design gives way to creation benintesto increasingly bizarre beings and metamorphic, but in three dimensions, theory of strange birds pictured in the Codex takes the form of real galligalline, ie Galgalline - neologism seraph who would say one hundred percent, except that it also appears, unbelievable but true, the national road map a remote village of Belluno Cesiomaggiore, where the road appears to Galgallina alongside the more prosaic ways Via Dante Foscolo - volatile, the seraphim, with two heads, one for just a cock and the other, where the seat would normally Rooster, hen, and vice versa), where the rainbow is not a natural phenomenon strange but worldwide, perhaps the source mechanical, electromagnetic, perhaps, or maybe who knows what deviltry of heaven, complete with mysterious flying machine capable of creating it; where men gradually take the shape their homes, to identify with completely, where the deer possess leaves that grow on their horns, benintesto always that the head is planted pot, where there are fish with diver built and fish with a ponytail, fish with bones and fish-shaped broom dishes to jump on the water, and so on, and where Lastly, some machinery to construct all provided is completely useless. Serafini, in fact, gave perhaps the best self-developing complicated machinery, or sometimes animal-machines, or machines- human beings, whose complexity is always directly proportional to useless, the emptiness, the stupidity of the end which should serve, thereby forever diametrically opposed, in some case, compared to more recent creations, such as the macchinossima and absolutely unsightly, Wim Delvoye Cloaca Turbo, huge machinery to produce a tiny curl of shit too true, and having more contrast, in playful spirit and playful, the very famous useless machines Bruno Munari, the various engines lizard turtle tired, the agitators queue for lazy dogs, the filipes. All machines with their own existence independent of their condition, we say, psychological, like those serafiniane (each has its own special personality, "he said, no case Munari describing his useless machines: "One day they are lively and agitated, and days after falling into an incomprehensible hibernate "a phrase that may well be Output from the mouth of Seraphim, as gloss that followed: "After all the machines profits are often boring with their rhythm uniform constant). It is not really a this regard, the comparison between risky machines, although, for now, only projects, by Seraphim with those of another mad machinery maker visionary and supremely unnecessary, with all their kit conception, design, implementation and then true, and even promotion, publicizing of (fake) launch market, and so on, the Finnish architect Alvar Gullichsen, highly visionary artist and yet rigorous in construction internal rules to its own universe, that in the late eighties created the Bonk Business Inc., holding imaginary for over a century would always according to (verosimilissima) fiction artist, dysfunctional and useless machinery, but with a true trademark of real advertising campaigns and true / false documentation of all types and kinds of great visual impact and communication. Moreover, in its complex and abstruse machines absolutely useless (as rules of our universe: not according to those of his, that we are, however, to still completely unknown), Serafini has been able to really like wrote Sgarbi yet, be "in balance between Leonardo and Eta Beta, the first possessing hand and the talent, the second solution impossible ". "Reflecting," Calvin is 34 to emphasize, "We would think that the peculiarity Serafini's language must be more than Alphabetical syntactic but: things in the universe language that evokes such we see illustrated in the tables of its encyclopedia, are almost always recognizable, but the connection between them to appear to upset with combinations and relationships unexpected ". "Looking at the Codex," echoes John Mariotti 35, "we see a reality mineral or botanical or faunal change through a stable part of the game, or root, which combines with prefixes, suffixes and interfissi. In his fictional universe Seraphim was able to give an that the imaginary universes wont unfortunately missing: the grammaticality. Here then, this Codex, there appears really like a big, tireless, multilayered complex and not only the anthem utopian dimension of fantasy, of creation of other realities, parallel to commonly accepted, caused by simple shift of perspective on what we call real, and on the remix continuous and incessant different levels, gender and language and scientific fields; but also a hymn to the infinite possibilities language - whatever it is - to reinterpret reality, to bend and shape functionally to their needs and to their worldview. Thus, under the banner of Utopia (Utopia Over time he learned to Seraphim considered "a food, nutrition fundamental ") and ambiguity, the circle seraphim back to close. "In some ways," Frederick gloss Zeros, "Serafini par propose the mixed bulk pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, which tries, so provocative, to hide the true ultimate sense, masking in a thousand ways, the most absurd and unthinkable, perhaps to make it more difficult (and enlightening) discovery ". In his speech fatally impossible to decipher, in the midst of impossible machines to build and of which no will never discover the secret operation, between animals ever seen, beautiful flowers and peoples in which all characters are mixed and all the races of the world beyond that never seen in any world, and where the characters uínani dissolve in those animals those animals in those plants, those than mechanical plant, etc. to- I'infinitc, the Utopia of Serafini takes slowly pious inexorably shape unfolds before our eyes with the naturalness of great mythological tales and the great epics of the past, invented forms, languages, syntactical and mathematical games, from now on, will never be incomprehensible : Will, simply, and undeniably serafiniane: or belonging the mad, mad mad world of inequality author of the Codex. 1 The first edition was published in the Codex Seraphinianus Franco Maria Ricci, Milan, in 1981 in two volumes (127 +127 pp., 108 color plates +128). 2 Among the many attempts to translate the language of the Codex remind those made by the Bulgarian linguist Ivan. Derzhanski, who claims to have identified the key for interpreting the numerical system seraphim, which would develop based on 21, and the former navy cartographer American Jim Marshall. Third edition in one volume is published in the U.S. by Abbeville Press, New York, 1983, the same year the Codex is published by Prestel in Germany, Monaco, the Netherlands by Meulenhoff-Landshoff, Amsterdam. In 1993, Franco Maria Ricci published in French, the fifth edition of the Codex in one volume, with a preface by Calvin, and a sixth in Spanish with a preface by the same writer again. 4 There are numerous internet forums, where boaters, from all over Europe, as well as several countries Quail Canada, Mexico and the United States, tell each other how came into possession of Codex, when it has been bewitched, and give advice on how and at what price can be in possession of a copy. For all, this statement copy some of Voodoo from Dallas: "I fell in love with the book as soon as one saw it and HAD to have it. " Five hundred tables of the Codex were taken in February 1981, Palazzo Grassi by Vittorio Sgarbi (Orhis Pictus, 100 tables from Codex Seraphinianus, Venice, Palazzo Grassi, in February 1981). Then the outputs of public boards Codex were extremely rare. 6 The so-called Voynich Manuscript is named to his first Buyer, Wilfrid M. Voynich (1912). Written in an alphabet unknown, is amply illustrated with images apparently fantastic. Find them in the manuscript of a letter of purchase for 600 ducats opens two hypothesis: that Rudolph has been cheated them (unlikely) or that he himself has been commissioned. 7 Luigi Serafini, The Theatre of Painting, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, Rome, on the occasion of the exhibition at Foundation Mudima, Milan, March 1998. 8 Interview with Patrizia Valduga, La Repubblica, 2002. 9 Biography in Orhis Pictus, op. cit. 10 Vittorio Sgarbi, Fictions of Serafini, Serafini in, Italian Factory exhibition catalog, in "Italian Factory, the new Italian art scene ', 50th International Exhibition Art of Venice, from June to October 2003. 11 Read the interview below to Armando Adolgiso in 2005 for "Enterprise. Voices and thoughts from space. " 12 Louis Serafini, The Theatre of Painting, op. cit. 13 Achille Bonito Oliva, in The Theatre of Painting, op. cit. 14 Louis Serafini, The Theatre of Painting, op. cit. 15 Interview with Alessandro Riva "Carnet Arte" June / July 2004. 16 Interview with Patrizia Valduga in La Repubblica, 2002. 17 Italo Calvino, The encyclopedia of a visionary in Collection sand, Mondadori, 1994 (first edition with pictures, Garzanti, 1982). 18 Interview with Alessandro Riva "Carnet Arte" June / July 2004. 19 "It happens that reality is too complex for the transmission oral or written. Only the law can express it that can embrace the water a whole "Alpha 60, supercomputers controlling Alphaville. J homonymous film. L. Godard, 1965. In Luigi Serafini, The Theatre of Painting, op. cit. 20 Pino Corrias, The Encyclopedia of the other world, 'La Repubblica', 2006. 21 Giorgio Soavi, Aloisio in Toyland in the newspaper, 1982. Following the game instinctively and disguises serafiniani identity mixed up, turns to his Soavi will, in a play hide and seek with the reader, the name Luigi Aloisio in Latin derivation. 22 Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, interview with Luigi Serafini, catalog Exhibition unlikely, 1990, Castle Volpaia (Siena). 23 "1 bullocks, as servants, bring your orders hanging neck, and speed through the deep sea "(for open sea is meant the Strait of Messina). 24 Giorgio Manganelli, Pulcinella: a thousand and none in Corriere della Sera, 1984. 25 The issue of cow Serafini dedicated in 2001, an exhibition Milan: Cows and Serafini, Le Bureau des esprits, catalog by Alessandro Riva, Giancarlo Prearo Publisher. 26 "What the current phobias that afflict the mantle spotted Europe has had for a short season, face of a mad cow (just before the sulfur profile Bin Laden overshadow all the dreams and imagination incubators West) is one of those jokes of history and of fate that only the great gods and fools can recognize as such. " 27 Pine Cornas, op. cit. 28 Douglas Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas, Basic Books, 1985. 29 Italo Calvino, op. cit. 30 Pino Corrias, op. cit. 31 Italo Calvino, op. cit. 32 Federico Zeri, op. cit. 33 Italo Calvino, op. cit. 34 Italo Calvino, op. cit. 35 John Mariotti, Mr. Fantasy, in "L'Espresso", 1981. 36 Federico Zeri, op. cit. Collum for your suspense ferunt IUSS iuvenci ut famuli, et celeres aequora longa secant Places Codex: the frescoed lunette in the cloisters of the church of Sant'Andrea delle Frate, Rome. Places Codex: the lantern of the church of Sant'Andrea delle Frattee the goldfish pond in the cloister of the church. Giorgio Soavi Codex Seraphinianus Books by Franco Maria Ricci's series "The Signs of Man "are made for probable descendants of emperors or royal families which, with the contempt that it is their own, not only treat subjects as if not exist, but when you deign to browse books, they must be large as a plantation and in the paper magnitude, if they expedient to do so, we must be room for castles, rivers and dairies to produce cheese and dairy delights. The books have this jattanza Ricci, do not care for the afflicted or thin, but are filled with chocolate cream and marron glacé, and if something's left between your teeth are not spices, but corals beryl and topaz her uncles, the Magi of Parma, have bequeathed. This short book sumptuous unbearable. I look at them nauseated by their looks. However when, a few years ago, Young appeared before me Aloisio Serafini and, in perfect silence, let me browse The tables have now been collected and just published by Franco Maria Ricci (Codex Seraphinianus, 2 volumes, 1981, LIT 300, 000) my first thought was to strike the individual who was watching me to kill him and take possession of those originals. Never seemed more propitious occasion to murder: no-one had seen him come into my studio and no one but the usual potted who walk for Milano impossible hours, I have seen out with the burden of his lifeless body dragged for standing up to the canal which, for obvious reasons, will not name. So they were just things, and nem- less than me and skinny curavo dell'esserino pale in front of me, having already with fast fancy removed and placed properly on the bottom of muddy canal itself. Everything was going so for best when, as in novels, always suspected the worst, a presence leaked, became material, and that moment I realized that Aloisio was unfortunately subject: I never could kill him to take possession of His drawings, and this is because he, like all mortals, and there had reports lived its own life, had knowledge : Someone, in short, knew him. A Catherine certain I had spoken, she had arranged the appointment: if someone on the police station, was was questioned after his death, would tell what he knew. Oddly said: the police is very good. But why is? Because ordinary people, who always knows , talk, tell, invent things plausible. The skin was then Aloisio Serafini safely, and how hard he tried not to have epidermal reactions to my joyful comments for his great skill in being crazy, that these drawings were so was created almost a normal conversation, as often happens between a non-delinquent - The author of these notes - and survived. He, aware of his talent, let me vent. What I had now said in the first half hour? I had never seen anything like it; that was brilliant, everything I wanted; that was totally insane and therefore deserved a great writer. What for? Serafini I addressed this question if not with the eyes, even those falsely discharged or absent from the problem. Thus began to look at the comments around, not bury, the drawings color of his stories of animals and human undergoing transformation. The transformation species according to a herbalist, stationers, surveyor and builder of sweet daubs of nature designer of machinery to produce rainbows that do not exist and, consequently, its private alphabet, inventor of a department store objects from which spurt flying animals and a colorful circus of pleasures and Discussed in an obsessive entertainment Persian language that of Marco Polo toys invented by the wayside. Comments or texts in the form of chapters and captions were, of course, written in Persian or better in language-are adjacent to mountain ranges of the states more neighboring Persia, a language most written and spoken, although for the truth ... I retraced my steps and I began to read explanations that page. .. (Number illegible) describing the adventurous celebration of a people who seemed indulge and fly for joy while under them, intricate machinery for conservation gas hilarious miss out small clouds in contact with the air turned into fireworks, but an artifice that had its own name or specific qualities than those of be surprising, propelled as if by an amusement park a few windmills fathers had produced children or child which accompanied the exploits. But it's all here? We ask readers of fantasy books . In fact this was only the beginning, because what I would like to make focus is language, the Persian-writing Cyrenaica, who has wandered far without a specific skill, but went walking on the shore of a sea in which, at other times, cropped heads or bodies of Cycladic sculpture, people without a real religion without a country, and perhaps without diseases of any kind, people who had of marine debris, which could in cloudless day perfect time to bite white pebbles or pink, as if were stuffed with almonds. That man-bea I had this awful and Aloisio Seraphim? One could doubt him, but his sparkling wit. While I strive to say what this elf that looked weakened without smallest of approval or disapproval, joy procured from epileptic his inventions, I always thought what writer could comment on these fantastic designs and crazy in love so just tell between someone and a crocodile, and the spectacle of what it remained on the bed of love passion was, of course, a crocodile, but what? A crocodile that he accepted as a pledge feminine sides of love and roses, that meat for which we are all going blessed in a trance when caressed, as he had done lightly, the body is with us, the real accomplice who will sacrifice. The name did not come out because Aloisio let me contemplate his plans for two hours only and then left. Now that the books I'm here on my desk and I resume my silent but deafening conversation with me same to digest his fairytale world, and I look more calm - calm and strong the losers - his Persian texts, I begin understand that the language he has invented perfectly true and legible. Just take in small doses, as is done with the verses the Bible. Even there, a world teeming it gives battle to survive the behind a huge landscape with a sun blinding seems to indicate that, with the help of darkness, a massacre will be given meal at dawn tomorrow, maybe the monsters the wizard Aloisio Serafini were born at the time of the great modern wars, and time it took specimens created a race which, while remaining within the limits and ineffable minor child, devouring candidly any kind of prototype in order not to proliferate people too orderly, capable of distinguishing at first glance with which cells must salad dressing, toys, Emperor's clothes and all the paraphernalia pastimes of those who burned indelibly period most inventive of our lives. in the newspaper, 1981 Federico Zeri The Universe transfigured Ten years ago, in 1972, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York State, set up a unique exhibition entitled "The Civilization of Llhuros, and consistent (it claimed) in the findings of excavations at Vanibo, Hund Draikum, and other centers an unprecedented culture llhurosciana, flowery Asia Minor, near Lydia. The rich never failed to card catalog geographical bibliography and reproductions of exhibits, including works of art next to figurative art (sculptures, frescoes), there was a series of strange objects (nose flute) as well artifacts (such as lemon squeezer, wrenches, irons) mysteriously changed and "displaced" to functions in nature sacred: all commented, very seriously, in the archaeological sense. But the whole collection (And the very idea of "civilization llhurosciana) was the product of fantasy artist Norman Daly, author of the alleged and inventor finds very funny (although sometimes heavy with sexual doppisensi) all superstructures described minutely in bizarre catalog. The case of this exhibition is perhaps extreme, but is not an isolated incident: probably the theme of "civilization invented" not until then had been conducted so thoroughly, until tangible object or place second a register of humor so hot . But it is certain that, at least in literature, is an issue that comes down in Europe an old tradition: it is safe say that the first home they should be identified in Plato's Republic. Then it is specified in the Utopias Sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or choose to describe themselves a geographical location (which may be a fabled China or some equally mythical savage people as it happens Enlightenment in the eighteenth century), it is always a towel that is reprocessed into political sense, moral, religious or humorous, indeed, is a real kind that has flourished in our century, thanks to visions of "future" Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell, and (in the wake of Rabelais and its pseudo-references) has had on the register literature, the most subtle variations and modulations to the work of Jorge Luis Borges, or Ernesto Bioy Casares. All this comes to mind watching (You can not just say "reading") work unique and fascinating, just now published in two volumes by the publisher Franco Maria Ricci Codex Seraphinianus Luigi Serafini a young Roman architect and between 1976 and 1978 drew hundreds of sheets that are being released through a made beautiful typography. Defining this? I said that it is asking a reference to the tradition of civility invented, "but there is more surprising because, Following images are inexhaustible a formula of exceptional mental richness and variety. We find (the state history) and Arcimboldi Bosch the "useless machines" Munari, the "Temples Egg "by Fabrizio Clerici, Gaudí, as well the science fiction literature, the alchemy Minutes of Jules Laforgue, the wild mechanism of paradoxical abstraction of Raymond Roussel, the surreal game of metamorphosis Alberto Savino, and many things yet. And likely the same Serafini becomes aware of the ground, so varied and stratified, where sinks his work, is suspect that this is not the result studies have direct exchanges conscious of knowledge accurate and thought out, resulting instead a kind of "evolutionary time" given the psychological and the cultural, understood in the broadest sense, also in geographical respects. The structure and images of the Codex in fact a touch log intonations that is limited neither boundaries, ranging from fancy to the paradox, Horror from the sensational, the logogrifo the joke humorous, caricature by intuition mysticism. Already the system work (that Summa resembles a medieval division for subjects, classes and subclasses) introduced in a climate of rationalism transfigured invention, released by processes mentally different than usual, and the description seraph to the university "shall by images of meticulous precision and clarity, and because of a write also fantastic, whose impeccable cursive is and is not showing all the characteristics of communication calligraphic true and authentic, also specified in numbers, but then remains in the closed indecipherable hieroglyph, close tightly without possibility of penetration. Said the second sharp precision which is conducted by Codex, and it seems appropriate play at least one of about four pages which are the two compounds volumes. There remains, however, to deny the validity of examples, the fact that only knowledge total of all makes adequately the meaning allowing value judgments: it is impossible a choice in the body of a huge fire, that every spark is an invention, each flame found a suggestive and perplexing. In fact, images that are far were chosen to comment rating in the press have focused on certain sheets that although full of humor, are among the less significant, such as with the couple who, during an embrace, it becomes a crocodile, or the other with fish that, emerging from the water surface, resemble wide-eyed. And yet, a of the most unusual of the Codex is a mixture the various strands of discourse, the absence any relationship between the multiple discursive tones, timbres and tones that occur unconnected, almost random, just like facts of everyday life, which only memory gives meaning of rational performance. If the Codex is the bearer of a message more intimate and deep, you must look within the constant interweaving of images and references, often misleading and sometimes equipped with a charge like that quick the pun, the joke and pun minutes. In some ways, it seems Serafini propose mixed in bulk, the pieces of a gigantic puzzle whose endeavor, so provocative, to conceal the true ultimate sense, masking in many ways, the most absurd and unthinkable, perhaps made more difficult (and enlightening) the discovery. If these critical intentions are real, then Italo Calvino has hit the mark in what is the sharpest since the review here appeared Codex, published the first issue FMR's magazine, art by Franco Maria Ricci. Calvin has highlighted the relationship between two tables, one showing a sort of Rosetta Stone, where pseudoscrittura accompanying the images is combined and made a comparison with another series of signs, very different and mysterious like primordial particles, the same as elsewhere are out in droves by ray of light of a street lamp, wrapped the dark night. Then the suspicion arises that Serafini the written word (the verb is received to fixate and measures communicative power) is equal to the essence of light, that light is the very origin of the intellect, that pervades the whole Universe itself. Maybe I'm wrong, but many clues make me think that in this cosmology, the apparent diversity, infinitely varied, is redo to one principle, which animates everything, and that, after all, remains identical to itself: because, in other words, everything is divine. If so, then the Codex is the expression a sort of "amauricianesimo, more insight reasoned that expression of a message deeply religious, such as Mozart's operas (and this is a name I've heard speak out by the author). Certainly we are facing text an exceptional figure, even for its eccentricity with respect to artistic culture Italian Journal of the moment: so outside the norm that it is likely that dismal coryphaei art criticism engaged, politicized academic fintorivoluzionaria, try to ignore it or bury, or at least sticky label jarring and confusing. There is to be a prophet to foresee Codex urged to come in the same car ary which is in turn tried to drowning De Chirico, Savino, Clerici, Licini and everyone who owned a visual vocabulary free from the boundaries of- the parish, the neighborhood, the festival regional the provincialism that has infected almost two centuries pollutes Italian painting. in La Stampa, 1981 Vittorio Sgarbi Seraphiniana the Methodus One room apartment in a great city, a light wood table, chair, stacks of books scattered among white paper. The door bathroom ajar, frequent noise by car, muffled by the closed windows. At eye level, library shelves, volumes of natural sciences of anatomy, local history and a modern edition of the Encyclopédie; higher narratives: The Aleph by Borges, the complete works of Sade Klossolwski and some first editions Fine Savinio (Sound Box, New Encyclopedia), the dinner of the ashes of Jordan Bruno, the Songs of Innocence and of Experience William Blake, The Baron in the Trees Italo Calvino, Don Quixote, rare books figured. So you can rebuild (or perhaps any other setting would be plausible) space physical and mental, where a man of talent, with eyes closed to reality, imagine Encyclopedia fantastic, an explanation Full and detailed and of a world that does not exist. Or rather, exists in its rational rules, but no less absurd to operation, those for which there are cars, trains, cinemas, television with twenty channels, comedians and objects in themselves useful transform men into sardines and larks, often tortured with constraints bodies, colors unbearable odors. With consistency and absence through a process construction of alienation. Serafini invented a parallel universe, governed by its internal laws, strict and infallible, often designed to demonstrate the goodness of a method (Serafina) another (the newspaper): everything is expressed through teaching boards illustrated and commented in a language invented- tion but not non-existent, if there is a universe ready to accept it. Serafini seems to mean that there is difference between what is true and what a true for many, because the human experience, articles, civilization and history are a Convention groups, as demonstrated anthropological diversity of a region than its neighbors, from similar anthropocentric principles. At different latitudes living civilization of China and Greek East and the West, for the deception time that does not actually belong to conventions and runs straight as shown the inexorable aging of our body. Civilizations overlap, live simultaneously and in parallel, but they defend themselves with boundaries, walls, rivers, mountains and walls, and with walls apartments. Serafinocentrico is anthropocentric. And the same position in the sixth century BC Xenophanes had said, reasonably doubt the existence gods, or at least those of an Olympus built in the image and likeness of man greek. "Men believe that the were born and have a voice and body similar to theirs. . . Therefore, the Ethiopians do their Camus and the blacks, the Thracians say that blue eyes and red hair, and even oxen, horses and lions, if they could imagine their gods in their similarity. Poets have encouraged this belief. Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the also what is the object of shame and reproach among men wrongs, adultery and mutual deception. " Serafini knows how Xenophanes nothing like what is on the presumed to be absolute, and therefore assumes for details of his absolute and consecrates him with an encyclopedia, where an that irony is not an ingredient staff but a universal category. Certainly the His image of the world is ruled by demiurgic idea, and he stands as a deity that gives order and law, statutes creating and implementing rules for remove from anarchy and chaos than any other possible arrangement and administration. To this end click the picture detailed, describing every detail with meticulous realism and refined pictorial and graphic execution, emulating, surprisingly without imitation, the great Italian illuminators of the fifteenth century, especially Ferrara who gave shape profane to the Bible Borso d'Este, and choirs, Missals, Breviaries, Gospels. On the other part, as these codes, with discoveries symbols, are unicorns, invented landscapes, two-headed birds, flowers of all kinds botany, perhaps twisted to draw a candlestick, as long ago Bestiari happened in medieval or bas monstrous and fantastic cathedrals Romanesque. Serafini introduces us to its code (Consisting of about six hundred plates) with image of a young professor, with hair long scarf and jeans, which indicates a sort of Rosetta stone where the language serafiniana invention is placed against hieroglyphics invented as a language: it is a bilingual notice and bifid explaining without explaining, stating programmatically differences and the translatability forms that do not affect the substance. E a subtle way to warn that its world exists and is "speakable", in same way that there is ours or any another which is only understandable conventional. On this basis also Serafini world is fully understandable and, so to speak, livable, not at all surreal, as might appear at first. The names of Magritte and Ernst, while evocatili, have no room in the library of Seraphim whose images are inspired rather those of scientific books, chapters of anatomy of the eye, stomach, heart, or the books of natural sciences and bo- tank. Put aside the tables on the city of light rainbow city and the bay, or those on samples of the human species, worthy of highest fantasy Schifanoia (compare Cossa of the lazy man with meat white-green door tied at the ankles, as a template by shooting, the own shadow): here the homo sapiens, at its primitive stage, is a man-tree, animal earth, or man-fish shell Wicker twisted, worn as a diver, and house on stilts. The city serafiniana is a labyrinth in construction as a huge amphitheater that has more to go live elsewhere architects with hand-pencil implement projects to construct buildings with playing cards (then the currency of the King of money can be replaced by a lens a monocle as porthole window), cemeteries architectures are of glass that enclose block colored bodies, as in cubic ice. The health system is by physicians able to repair the meat on the skeletons defeating mechanically death, the children return for teeth is made welcome by a device that transforms the operation into a game of basketball- Tabletop, where the tooth is the ball. The design addresses major seraphim even small domestic problems: the so dining table becomes an inclined plane which can drop crumbs while objects are supported by appropriate media tilted in the opposite direction. The World power consists of fat people ininteressanti as mandarins and Chinese mounted on seats equipped with helmets bright by hairdressers for women. In short, everything has a place and a box order meticulous and perverse universe seraphim, where even the man undergoes deformation profile of the plant kingdom twisting arms or feet as a chair Thonet, but always, as in our world, to the end (of property) of a supreme will for us inscrutable which allocates wars, floods and famines. How surprising then the delicious, thin serafiniana perversion. in Orbis Pictus exhibition catalog, Venice, Palazzo Grassi, 1981 John Mariotti Mr. Fantasy His name is Luigi Serafini. Debuted at large : An exhibition in Venice and two volumes published Franco Maria Ricci. And the repertoire encyclopaedia of an imaginary universe. Is entitled Codex Seraphinianus. On two volumes which make up does not appear author's name. Although the text will abound, not a single word could be deciphered, writing Fingerprint Semitic alongside the rich and nice set of images. Printed publisher Franco Maria Ricci in the series "The Signs of Man" is in bookstores in these days. Meanwhile, an exhibition of one hundred of its tables will be open Nov. 28 in Venice Palazzo Grassi. This encyclopaedia illustrated with a fictional universe, different from ours, and but not radically dissimilar, manifests, in a resolute way, and unexpectedly, a young Roman of thirty years: Louis Serafini. A book like its tacit requires also have some discretion about the author. Who is the Seraphim, and such intentions is did your patient's fatigue is not so important to know. Codex is a work which agrees with the naive approach. It may well happen that, taking into hand, readers of long memory remember children themselves in the act of browsing a picture book. Although we were not then still able to read, not for this were the only images to attract our attention, and the distribution of alphabetic signs on the page, and their relationship with figures, we also deeply interested. Existed, the counterpoint illustrations that we could recognize, and signs remaining undeciphered a kind small, muffled music of knowledge, be explored. Only the will to put us in a condition not unlike may have fed scribe from the obstinacy with which Louis Serafini filled with incomprehensible writing the two volumes of his work. But Codex Seraphinianus not only has the charm of "books with figures" to our dear childhood imitating, through the layout and the distribution of matter, which apparent from the illustration, the shape an encyclopaedic repertoire we confronts, with great clarity, some fundamental elements of knowledge. Actually, the intention could also seem parodic. From the time of Of Vincent of Beauvais Speculum maius is encyclopedias reflect ambition and almost suck the universe within a series of words and phrases with meaning. Write and illustrate an encyclopedia in which words and phrases not have any sense, seems to this mock draft. However, this intention is not satirical is seen in Codex Seraphinianus, no clue, indeed, I would say that there is a kind of devotion in Serafini absolute fidelity with which reproduces in a fantasy world, all knowledge workers and its primary operations: the apparent act, the act of change, the act and dell'analogizzare metaphorize. The latter, which also produces some humorously surrealistic invention, it is perhaps the least interesting. Are other two to be the charm of the Codex Seraphinianus . As the shapes of words together in declensions and conjugations, and stones, plants, animals in groups imposed by the disciplines that study, so creatures of fantasy are Serafini aggregated and displayed, both in their entirety fixed and variable both through tables which may not be aware of the classification and teaching. Leafing through the Codex, we see a reality mineral or botanical or faunal change through a sturdy part of the game, or root, which combines with prefixes, suffixes and interfissi. In his fictional universe Seraphim was able to give an that the imaginary universes soles unfortunately- little miss: the grammaticality. It would be a unfortunate that the Codex is praised Seraphinianus only the new elegance of the de- ment, forgetting the most important value: His grace epistemological. in L'Espresso, 1981 Giorgio Manganelli Pulcinella: a thousand or none Luigi Serafini "designer" is the author of graphic invention that classic, authentic masterpiece, which is the Codex Seraphinianus, published by Franco Maria Ricci in 1981. Now, with his extravagant imagination and valuable, labyrinthine and shiny, addresses a theme loving and angry, popular and archaic : A fable or myth, or a tragicomedy Pulcinella. With the collaboration inventive P. Cetrulo of "Napule" (where P stands for Polecenella), Serafini has designed a story mental, an essay, a nursery rhyme, epic or, as the authors want a suites. What ever this Pulcinella Pulcinellopedia? (The title refers to the slight games, but intricate, the Gymnopédies of Erik Satie.) It tends to be a only, not as exceptional, and as its lone inhabitant world and this world to glimpse rather than a drawing or map, where an island Far Contrada that comes close to pretty much those lands, Trallalero, Quiproquo, Tricca. So Punchinello is a loner, but is protected by its multiplicity , Because, although rarely, or never at all, he encounters other images of man or woman, if he meets continuously same, splits, warps in a Punch Composite, endless Pulcinella ; Knows metamorphosis, becomes a tree - With branches full of leaves - Punch- table, stool, umbrella. The myth has it that he is Pulcinella constantly accompanied by something that belongs, as decorating- vine belongs to Bacchus: spaghetti; not every time the suite is dominated from spaghetti, but when they appear are intensely dramatic: thus we see a Pulcinella crucified by forks charges spaghetti, spaghetti killed at short, and his triumph shows him in a sort of empyrean overlapped on a donkey, while the his feet on the ground, smoking a bowl of noodles surrounded by faithful pulcinelleschi : Figures, both of which are suspect a Christian family of phantom Pulcinella. Elusive, in fact: indeed, more than once alluded to as Pulcinella to a shape, an act of invention nothing, and we also see that a Punch removes the mask and is revealed faceless. Appears here, and appeared in the Codex, a singular quality of fantasy graphics Serafini say something without laughter joy, indeed, a kind of darkness, a fund darkly manic, a magical iteration superstitious and that seems to allude to a as are gestures conjure elaborate Neapolitan apotropaic. Beautiful juggler image, Serafini makes Polecenella a ghost does not exist and multiple, nothing innumerable, with a fragment of collective memory and a prophetic epiphany. As myth, the Pulcinella is timeless, constantly born and dies, is indeed related to everything that comes and dies, and a drawing gently unsettling shows a Punch as it prepares to steal the hourglass of death because ghost immortal Punch is set and wise fool, the hero is a coward, perhaps the only hero humanly possible. in Corriere della Sera, 1984 Douglas Hofstadter Questing for the Essence of Mind and pattern Codex Seraphinianus is a much more elaborate work. In fact, it is a highly idiosyncratic magnum opus by an Italian architect indulging His sense of fancy to the hilt. It Consists of Two Volumes in Invented in Completely Language (Including the numbering system, Which is Itself Rather esoteric), penned Entirely by the author, accompanied by Thousands Beautifully Drawn of color pictures of The most fantastic scenes, machines, beasts, feasts, and so on. It purports to be a vast Somewhat of a Hypothetical Land encyclopedia like the earth, with many creatures resembling people to Various degrees, But many creatures of unheard-of bizarreness promenading Throughout the countryside. Serafini has sections on physics, chemistry, Mineralogy (Including many drawings of elaborate gems), geography, Botany, zoology, sociology, linguistics, technology, architecture, sports (of all sorts), clothing, and so on. The pictures Have Their Own Internal logic, But They Are Filled to Our Eyes with utter non sequiturs. A typical example depicts an automobile Some chassis covered with huge piece of What Appears to be melting gum in the shape of a small mountain range. All over the gum are small insects, and the wheels of the "Cars" Appear to Have melted as well. The explanation is all there for anyone to read, If They Can Serafinian decipher. Unfortunately, No One Knows That language. Fortunately, On Another page there is one picture of a scholar standing by what is in Apparently Rosetta Stone. Unfortunately, the only language on it, besides Serafinian Itself, is an unknown kind of hieroglyphics. Thus The Stone is of no help the unless you Already Serafinian know. Oh well .. . Many of the pictures are grotesque and Disturbing, But Extremely beautiful and others are visionary. The inventiveness That Took to it like Up With All These conceptions of a Hypothetical land is staggering. in Metamagical Themas, New York 1985 Franco Marcoaldi On the opposite of utopia Who is this elf forties who are came to see his great, bare Roman house (to join, on background, the music gently obsessive Philip Glass) is not easy for me to say. A painter? An architect? A designer? A sculptor? Luigi Serafini - than he is - is all these things. But clinging one or more of these labels, the Goblin We shelled a hand still time. Probably because any "definition" ill fits a character Amphibious by nature: perennial pot boiling, which makes life form invented Utopia in the flesh. He says: "Utopia is a word that I saw for the first time with my eyes during a long trip to America, in the early seventies. I saw architecture "organic" by Frank Lloyd Wright as nell'intrinseca size utopian American society, quell'altalena permanent space in between work, nature and artifice. Since then I have learned Utopia is like a food, nutrition fundamental. Always, but especially if you carry a craft, with crayons and building blocks. What is the utopia that stretch their Seraphim of the facts clearly show retracing its rich and noble work. Since its debut, striking without clamor: the publication of the Codex Seraphinianus, libroni two large, thickly painted and written with an alphabet fantastic universal that soon "published" in Germany, Holland 'and the United States, among others enthused Italo Calvino, who wrote: "The writing serafiniana, if you have the power to evoke a world where the syntax of things is overturned, it must contain the mystery hidden beneath its surface indecipherable, a deeper mystery concerning the internal logic of language and thought. " The key to this mystery lies probably follow the directions of Calvin himself, in adherence to the idea Ovid's Metamorphoses, according to which all territories of existence are mutually contiguous and permeable: the anatomic and mechanical ; The human and the plant, and the zoo ore, the arms and technology, the wild and metropolitan. Here then, the to be alone in its upcoming "exits" from here a couple of months, the publication of volume Architecture at Franco Maria Ricci, a treatise on architecture fantastic suspended Leon Battista Alberti and between Lequeu, an exhibition Hong Kong paintings and sculptures on the theme threshold, the divide between the West and East (hence the choice of cittàponte, back next part of China Communist). And finally one more exhibition Amsterdam, this time with sculptures of smoke, small Buddha steelwool from which mouth spreads in space, thanks to a system smoke, this ineffable subject. Do, do, do. If you go to find, Louis is always busy doing something. "Starting Codex I never thought of a design of my artistic work, but simply I attended the event onset. As if you did it alone, becoming I thing that I was by sliding- do, or that canvas that chair. " If something Serafini is recognized, it is that that he never worried about the "success" nor have to economize and exploit the success of its own "sign" from repeat endlessly as a mark of factory (very frequent appearance in many artists post-war). Thus begins the long design activity industrial; then there are the crazy houses built Marche, the fanciful sculptures ceramics. All the while with a mobility surprising that, even in the presence of a sign recognizable, it prevents the search of any apparent and pigeonholed of his work. Take the painting. And this canvas I have before my eyes, which is a obliquely man suspended in a sky-sea blue, to bless the moon. Its Dual head, bigger heart. Dress a skirt of fish, stocking leopard head . This figure seems to have been crossed from classicism, romanticism, symbolism. It seems that the same conceptualism - Too pretentious and sententious - then had to leave quickly field to the more "serious" play by the Surrealists, Finally, the imagined figure affabulatoria and has taken over. A Serafini like the reverse delusional reality. And it is eager to hunt . But I also have a wish, and I would not I left here not knowing if There is, at bottom, a precise poetic around it moves constantly this volcano lit. If anything binds them His chairs with the curl, his paintings of world to come, its bestiaries Teratology. And finally this is outside the perimeter, to delimit two words: iconic and vivid. in L'Espresso, 1990 Achille Bonito Oliva The Theatre of Painting "Making a copy is not everything, but copy all the things, and since This total does not exist, except as an idea in our consciousness, the true realist copy just an idea. From this point of view be a mistake to define this more precisely, as idealism "(Jose Ortega y Gasset Adam in Paradise, 1910). Here the assumption of which to define the work of Luigi Serafini that makes a painting as a deposit of stylized images and contaminated, but out of all pride and thus totalizing from any form of idealism. The artist moves side of the linguistic contamination eclecticism and stylistic meaning metalinguistic awareness and work and therefore adopt a sensitivity Mannerism. Uironia is the weapon with which Serafini away all traces of self Ideally, any identification between reality and language. The reality of art is the language, the pool of images making up memory iconic artist, who goes a step further by identifying style and language. In this sense Serafini acts within a line resumed the tradition of Mannerisms specific one that develops in the second mid-sixteenth century, under the sign the eccentricity and the eccentricity of bizarre formal and exasperation fantastic . The work becomes necessarily artificial product, says Ortega y Gasset, as must the disjoint nature to articulate the aesthetic form. The nature, the modern artist, is layered language, consisting of a forest styles. In this forest no stylistic there are categories or primates, high areas or areas Low: everything is the result of an accumulation which converge diverse and references belonging to cultures too far apart them. The tool is used by Seraphim the course of the quotation, which becomes a way for the artist to resume models which, however, is not identified. The resumption refers to a stylistic means track deviated and deviant. The deviation inevitably means change, a loss of identity for the same model used. The language becomes finding a simple compositional element image that intersects with others, from other contexts, less golden. Many languages are stacked and carried within and sculpture at the center many collisions that shatter the sense of unity and bring them along lines ironic twist and distortion. Economy of waste holding work seraphim, based on crushing each unit, which then means abandoning a unifying point of view of art and world itself. Surrealism, Dadaism, Cubism, futurism, abstract art, pop art to and the resumption expressionist become the sequence within which the artist stabilizes construction their own devices, artifacts coming to the fierce, grotesque shooting a kind of realism, understood as a style follows the bad taste of totalitarian ideology and perhaps the bad taste to any ideology . The grotesque becomes the stylistic which acts as glue, able to bind iconographic materials by disparate an approach, however, never stable. Instability models leads to instability each definition, the inevitable need the language of force along the tangent precisely the grotesque, a necessary theatricality able to found the performance. Serafini uses a kind of theatricality image, ability to allow maximum detection and reading. He founded painting as a visual theater of multiplicity, through a sensitivity throughout Mannerist living on the crushing and description the special and unusual. The frame framework became the frame of a stage that works on the accumulation dream and distribution of linguistic findings according to an order striking and explicit second the natural destination of the work, which is that of mass society. The difference between historical and neo-mannerist mannerism consists in the destination necessarily alter the stylistic. In first case, the artist moves under pressure purchasing a refined and cultured, a ultimately interpersonal exchange. In second case, however, the contemporary artist moves under the stimulus of a client impersonal and within a context that knows no shades, but approval and inattention mentioned Walter Benjamin. The theatricality in this context is precisely the status that accompanies the occurrence of things, which enables each gesture find recognition. Serafini amplifies its stylistic references, submit them to the optics of a dilated sort of magnifying glass, capable of produce a recognition of places of levy language. Everything is clear. The image is the product an artifice, a work of art built to by assembling exhibits a language everyone speaks. Fertility language becomes a weapon to be able to cross all territories of the iconography, from the high end of art history, that low in the history of costume and news . The image was created by the collision between different fields of reference, then mixed inside the convention imagery collective. The collective imagination becomes Filter paradoxical light on the artist language, where he seems to abandon his personal vision and adopt instead explicit signs at the edge of kitsch, a museum that collects electronic and blatant all styles not limited chronological and geography. Of course this imaginary lives a reality with a high reproducibility, standardized and headed towards multiplication. So Seraphim tends to spend his images further into the optical board animated, replacing Kafka Disneyland the sense of estrangement with the hedonistic dream. Everything is possible the plot between metaphysical infinitely small out of scale with an enlarged detail . In this gap lies the ability of art : Difference and produce weight loss. To do this the artist must pursue a ironically aimed toward a to-tal the. A look that stands outside the Earth, thus transcending the gravitational weight to arrive at a distance sidereal. From here the artist, who became absolute and ironic eye, obviously can aim the complexity of things. From here though the eye-artist see the world transformed into a forest petrified at the same time life styles. The world is inhabited by the language, conventions occupy the entire territory, including private domestic space the viewer. Serafini, the artist, then strives to upsetting the conventions, to produce routes visual collision between distant languages and alternative, to build a striking disorder finds that between the first inhabited areas cultural politely kept at a distance between them. The artist's eye sees and provides. Part of a statistical look and then removes paralysis of the conventions and introduces surprise and derision. The world is not seen as a place frozen, but as a space of emotion and then imploded able, somehow, to produce change and high filament temperature. Serafini apparently thinks that the Convention also means social exchange and so erotic. Ultimately art becomes the new field of gravitation, where there high and low, horizontal and vertical and creates the space where the party understood as relief and compensation, fertility language, but in the world. Exhibition catalog, Milan, Fondazione Mudima, 1998 Pasquale Chessa The art of "cow" Aristotle owes much of its fame to the invention of leapfrog. That is, each horse is different but all lead to the essence of the horse. Many centuries later Luigi Serafini, even if that is an architect paint a bit 'is the philosopher, will try again with the "Cow." In Milan, until the end of the year The rooms in the gallery Bureau des esprits, Via Cerva 6, have exposed a series of cribs under bell jar in protagonosta is the idea that the cow, ie the cow. " From Cow to the bay, Cow sharpener by the rat of Europe, Seraphim is the raid zoological between two extremes: Beginning and End of Civilization. Of course could not miss the bull, but is a deuteragonist philosophically gregarious, even when glimpsed behind the Ariadne of Naxos translated into neopop dance style or clinging to Last tango of Crete. On duty at the entrance, wear a mask Cow (But there is also that of the bull). By reporting King's letter in which Giorgio Soavi asks Pope to buy cribs blasphemous unnatural of Serafini. in "Panorama", 2001 Patrizia Valduga Interview But where you're better, in Rome or Milan? I live and work in an imaginary city where Via del Tritone in Piazza Cordusio emerges. I find complementarity: I have joined in an imaginary metropolis, like Paris. Codex you did here, you were born in Milan as artist. You have a lot to this city. Even all you can say. But now tell us all the evil you can. And improper to speak ill of a nomad a place. Why constantly moving takes only the best things. I can not believe that an artist could love Milano and Rome. Paradoxically Milan is the most Roman of Rome: Here you can see through the thistle and decumanus the Brodsky argued that cross the track to be the true meaning of the dream of Constantine, or the cross as the ideogram of the City. Since place to meet and exchange the old Mediolanum has its nomen omen in Today's Media. Since then, laboratory what can happen in Italy. Milan is colorless compared to Rome. No, it's a very colorful city. Has only problem of the 'enlightenment. " Moisture creates a diffused light that flattens. But with the Fohn. .. But Baroque Rome. . . Here is a legacy which is the anticlassical Borromini baggage brought to Rome. Borromini is so called because it works with Borromeo, he was Francesco Castelli, Ticino certify the bill as Swiss hundred francs. But in art it is more provincial Rome. And Italy is peripheral sites of production are elsewhere. Missing exhibitions that create the atmosphere of the year, as in Pa- rigid or New York. Everything is a bit 'set. Well, if she cries Athens, Sparta does not laugh. From America come emphasized the real crap. Hegemony is also this. Do crap hegemony in place is better than them elsewhere. If you do not see evil, sets out your assets. I am very fond of the Ambrosiana in Bramantino particular blade, with devil frog that turned into huge, perhaps one of the most disturbing paintings, a bit 'metaphysical, a bit' symbolist, a bit 'surrealist . Then Brera and Poldi Pezzoli. And the Museum Archaeology with a garden always desert. And then those fringed velvet drapes applied to the gates in case of mourning and that transform a facade of baroque Viennese in the Siglo de Oro. And what you still love? The neo-classic, that you can enjoy only here in Italy and Trieste. I was fascinated, just arrived, Foro Buonaparte not see in writing and Bonaparte. It means a lot. I like history of canals and still see them through those facades of houses without they do not make sense. Are you working on the Views of Corso Buenos Aires. I want to talk? It is a place of spleen. The promenade Sunday afternoon, "window-shopping, the look without buying, dummies multiethnic, now lemon yellow, now blacks chocolate bars on the sidewalk on a Sunday of life that fascinates me greatly. Between the other gives me an idea of the Russian Prospekt. And then it's nice to walk with others in controsole, seeing without being seen. What does it mean to put next to a person his two small? And the photography that plays with the film, which is movement, Kine, the space-time. Multiplied Cando expressions, created around the person its variations. Always with photography, I am working on an idea of picture double and triple. To whom do you feel the debtor, who are the architects of your mind? Certainly the first is your father But he was an engineer, and built in house a submarine. And a TV. I saw literally born television near the kitchen, when lit gradually valves tubes. A person certainly important for me was Jordan Falzon, theosophical and multifaceted character, friend Breton and translator, artist and critic, and "Massacre of Christians by Ungaretti! He was also an actor, or if he played better same as the Voice of the Moon movie Fellini who collaborated. Here lived in Progress Genoa 1. And here is dead. Do you think that art can serve a useful purpose in society? Should understand what is now the art, because there is competition in the object consumption, which gives immediate pleasure, calling on all scientific our sensory perception. What distinguishes a commodity from an art object? Time. We live immersed in a dimension consumption. "For the posters will judge" I happened to say. Meanwhile the market does what it wants, can mock us for centuries. For centuries, no, the arc of our lives yes. Today for many the market is no longer the half, but the end. You're either in or you're out, and work will be replacing a total . Have you been to Turin to the foundation of Patrizia Sandretto Re Reba. . . Yes, I understand. When has he uttered a the name is time to go home. .. Longer than MOMA, the Met, Tate and the Louvre, along ... No, there are still state. Me say it is curated by a former artist. And to finish with a flourish, Victor Hugo and Celine: "L'amour, c'est la extase the unique" or "L'amour C'est l'infini mis à la portée des caniches. " Love for you is the only ecstasy is the infinite set the reach of poodles? It is a poem by Auden who is called Truth I pray you, love. Have led to nature of ecstasy, I quit. What More important is knowing how to fall: maturity is, fund, to be able to commute. in La Repubblica, 2002 Gianluca Marziani At the curtain back Codex Wonderland After more than twenty years still seethes Codex Seraphinianus Luigi Serafini. His mammoth dictionary "visions", a tome encyclopedic 400 pages in fine Cellulose connoisseurs, was released in 1981 for publisher Franco Maria Ricci. On paper there is also among strange plants, animals absurd metaphysical mazes, flying machines, food, arcane phrases of an alphabet, equations mathematical symbols, drawings and boundless number of anomalies visionary. A project neoilluminista be refined and cultured, mid between naturalism "scientific" and the vein surrealist fantasy. The Codex was the acrobatic surprise of this young author surprising, capable of telling the ideas a ritual that reinvents a pictorial parallel reality of the late twentieth century. As often happens in Italy, beautiful ideas run free, and some of Oltrestivale captures for the development practice to Philippe Decouflè example, a man of cinema and theater in Paris in 1961 with a past circus, music videos and commercials with author big international names. Just in these days (March 24 to 28), far Codex (1987) and subsequent Decodex (1995), is staged at the Opéra de Lyon Tricodex third stage of a formal action Codex Seraphinianus with its global mutant and stories poetically absurd each page. Decouflè is the confirmation of a passion that has lasted for over fifteen years, a kind of ritualistic obsession with which building forms of a shared dream. For Serafini is an ideal "marriage" distance: two unusual and unclassifiable talents, theory and practice designed danced that cling to the stage in a journey between size and dazzling pictorial three-dimensional body. Luigi Serafini, born 1949, artist transverse DNA is an infected infecting between painting, drawing, sculpture, design, set design, writing, costumes, architecture . The last leg of its journey are digital works that elaborate, through minor modifications, painting paintings classic. The ironic yet another gesture from a eclectic creator of visual vertigo, past in collaboration with Federico Fellini The Voice of the Moon for the sculptural work Naples underground. In the capital Naples has always been an unmistakable combination of mysticism and sensuality, seraphim worked at the Mater Dei stop contributing (Under the artistic direction of Achille Bonito Oliva) to an urban project among the most successful in the world. If you go back to Milan, our story rewinds to 1981, when he participated in the first Serafini shows in Memphis, the group of Ettore Sottsass which promoted an alternative design, ipercolorato, pop in the hearts and innovative laminated plastic surfaces. Serafini, After that baptism between sculpture and design, objects created for companies like Sawaya & Moroni, Artemide, Edra, Kundalini. From set and costume designer featured collaborations with TV programs but also with the Teatro alla Scala and the Piccolo Teatro <span id="goog-gt