Zicarelli, an unabashed junkie for science fiction cinema and an avowed fan of Kubrick, may have taken the title of  his new show from the first act of the iconic science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Zicarelli’s praxis is ultimately informed by Stanley Kubrick, 2001’s equally iconic, aggressively reclusive auteur. 

The Dust of Men  feeds off Kubrick’s preoccupations with form and frailty. And taken in sequence, as a chronological progression from the first space of Silverlens to its third and last, it is its own self-contained narrative of frailty.

It begins in the first space: images of sacrifice and consumption evoking  the inevitability of decay; moves on to the next space: a virtual shrine to the processes of decay, to repetition and artifice and the way time makes history of us all.  And it ends in the third, with a new cycle of decay through regeneration, exemplified by the piece that dominates it, the show’s most, and quite possibly only, overt nod to a Kubrick film. Feeding off 2001’s second and fourth acts, tapping into the same discrepancies of scale that visually and philosophically dominate Kubrick’s other films and the entire tradition of metaphysical science-fiction cinema:  men dwarfed by monoliths and machines, men dwarfed by history and fate and war and ego and lust.

The original title of 2001’s first act is The Dawn of Man. The transposition is entirely Zicarelli’s, and so is the way it underlines, rather succinctly and eloquently, the theme of the show: how the cycle is uncaring and perpetual and how the beginning and end are, ultimately, the same fixed point.

About the Artist 

A self-proclaimed failed graffiti artist and musician, Costantino Zicarelli tries to incorporate these failed attempts into more interesting visual forms. His body of work, mostly works on paper, often reflects the history of drone metal, black metal, and everything rock n’ roll.  As an artist, he is interested in putting a less chaotic line between the subculture scene and the idea of using reality as fictional tools, or vice versa.  Zicarelli is the recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ 13 Artists Award in 2012.