Limited Edition of 5
42.2 x 40.0 in
107.2 x 101.6 cm
US $ 4,600
The color of this work is its first surprise. Where most of the metal Creature works operate in the register of rust and corrosion, earthen reds and oxidized grays, this one departs sharply: vivid turquoise dominates the central vertical axis, flanked by red oxide and dark mechanical forms that suggest tubes, bolts, and welded joints. The palette is tropical, almost festive, and the figure it generates is correspondingly strange: part insect, part machine, part heraldic creature from an invented mythology.
The color of this work is its first surprise. Where most of the metal Creature works operate in the register of rust and corrosion, earthen reds and oxidized grays, this one departs sharply: vivid turquoise dominates the central vertical axis, flanked by red oxide and dark mechanical forms that suggest tubes, bolts, and welded joints. The palette is tropical, almost festive, and the figure it generates is correspondingly strange: part insect, part machine, part heraldic creature from an invented mythology.
Ragazzini photographs a fragment of rusted machinery whose corrosion chemistry has produced turquoise and red oxide alongside the expected grays, mirrors the result, and then works the image: the mirroring establishes the bilateral structure, and the subsequent elaboration amplifies the chromatic intensity until what might have been a subtle note becomes the visual argument of the finished work.
The figure that emerges, with its circular eye-like elements and projecting antennae-shaped forms, belongs to a register beyond the archaic or the mythological: something engineered rather than evolved, imagined from the logic of the machine rather than the logic of the body. The vivid turquoise prevents the reading from settling into anything solemn. The work holds its chromatic surprise intact and declines to apologize for it.
For a closer look at the making, and the thinking behind the Creature series: What the Eye Finds
