Text by Philippe Van Cauteren, Yuko Hasegawa.

A tribute to the most famous modern Flemish painter. Fabre has created a number of new works especially for this exhibition displaying more than two hundred.Jan Fabre (Antwerp, 1958) is an artist and a director and uses his works to speculate in a loud and tangible manner about life and death, physical and social transformations as well as the nature of cruelty, which is present in both animals and humans. As a grandson of a famous entomologist, Jan Fabre widely uses wildlife aesthetics. He uses beetle shells, animal skeletons and horns as well as stuffed animals and images of animals in various materials. The list of unusual materials goes beyond that and covers blood and BIC blue ink. As emphasized by the painter and acknowledged by critics and researchers, his art goes back to the traditions of classic Flemish art, which he admires: Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob Jordaens are his main inspiration.

Scultore, disegnatore, scrittore, regista, editore: sono solo alcuni dei campi creativi investigati da Jan Fabre, un artista che da oltre trent'anni porta avanti un'intensa ricerca interdisciplinare e che presenta, in questo volume, l'opera installata presso Casa La Marrana di Ameglia (La Spezia), intitolata Il Rifugio (Per la Tomba del computer sconosciuto) e costituita da un ammasso di 100 croci di legno ricoperte di inchiostro blu Bic, su cui sono scritti nomi di insetti. Le immagini, scattate dal fotografo Aurelio Amendola, sono precedute da un saggio critico di Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, curatore dell'esposizione, e dai testi tratti da una conversazione tra Jan Fabre, Luigi Ficacci, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio e Alberto Garutti. Segue una postfazione di Achille Bonito Oliva. Edizione a tiratura limitata. Annotation Supplied by Informazioni Editoriali

This volume foregrounds Pina Bausch, Romeo Castellucci and Jan Fabre as 3 leading directors who have each left an indelible mark on post-war European theatre. Combining in-depth discussions of the artists' poetics with detailed case studies of several famous and lesser-known key works, the authors featured in this volume trace a range of foundational aesthetic strategies that are central to the directors' work: the dynamics of repetition vis-à-vis fragmentation, the continued significance of language in experimental theatre and dance, the tension between theatricality and the performative reality of the stage, and the equal importance attached to text, image and body. This volume develops a vivid picture of how European stage directors have continued to redefine their own position and role throughout the latter half of the 20th century.