VICENZA – The only sure thing is that he doesn’t lack mannequins. After the male perched on the cross and the female immersed up to her breast in the waters of Lake Fimon, now also the child dangling on a swing appears.
The frame is that of a cathedral erected in 1931 and never finished, a gigantic skeleton with a sacred aura that now exponentially multiplies the curiosity around these installations that people insist on calling “angels”. So here is the fourth angel of the unknown artist from the province of Vicenza, a sure fan of Maurizio Cattelanwho is trying to become someone by exploiting the charm of the mystery.
The impression is that it is also succeeding, at least judging by the procession that is in front of the Incompiuta, the name that has earned this building abandoned for 91 years, erected with the project to dedicate it to St. Michael the Archangel and never finished for lack of funds. Well, a swing has been hoisted over the round arch and a child’s dummy has been placed on it. And under a lectern with a sentence: “Two ways to shine: by one’s own light or by light reflected from a mirror”. So now from the town hall, which is across the street, employees and administrators can’t help but observe the fourth “angel”. A little angel this time.
“It was put on the night between Saturday and Sunday” reasoned the mayor Bruno Beltrame, who does not hide that he is engaged in the hunt for the mysterious artist. “Surely he is a person who likes to have a large audience. On Sunday morning there were over a thousand people here for the march of the three fountains. All to photograph the swing, of course”.
It is not improper to speak of “hunting” the artist, because this is what we are talking about since the municipal police have been deployed. “I asked the brigade to extrapolate the data from the license plate system, the video surveillance system that detects all the number plates of vehicles entering and leaving the municipality”. Hypotheses and suggestions are already circulating. “One person could not have done such a job” continues Beltrame. “And to transport all that material you certainly need a pickup truck.” So off to the license plate survey. More out of whim than out of necessity. The Superintendency, on the other hand, has already expressed itself: the child on the swing must be removed, because the Incompiuta is a bound building. It sounds like an oxymoron, but it is.
Francesco and Ravisa, two workers on their lunch break, park the van in the middle of the square and start taking pictures. They are not the only ones, actually. “It must be admitted that it is really beautiful, impressive”, says another mayor without strategy games, that of the neighboring municipality, Arcugnano. The myth of the nameless white angel was born there and the mayor Paolo Pellizzari tried in various ways to discover the unknown author. “But nothing to do, no one has shown up at the moment. More than anything else we also struggle to understand what kind of message they want to convey”.
The first mannequin appeared in mid-January on one of the two towers that give the name to this fraction of Arcugnano: the silhouette is that of a man, she is seated on an arm of the metal cross that rises from the hill, which can be reached by walking via Sack. After a few months the second also appeared but this time the silhouette was that of a woman, lying on the shore of Lake Fimon, also in the municipality of Arcugnano. On her back a phrase extrapolated from Morgan’s song, “Elsewhere”: “Free yourself from beliefs, poses and positions”. The woman of the lake has slowly but surely sunk. So much so that now you can almost see only her head and shoulders, buried as she is by the water and by her secrets.
Brendola is a novelty, in this artistic puzzle that until now had involved only Arcugnano. Last week the bust of a man with a mirror in his hand was placed in the pine forest overlooking the town. “Only with the courage to look at yourself in every fragment of the world will you find the infinite within you”. It didn’t last long, though. Some vandal damaged it and someone else made it disappear permanently.
Now the child on the swing, four or five meters high, beyond the barbed wire.