Action n°27 – Incarnazione by Gio Montez in collaboration with Violet’Or
In the intimate and refined setting of the cultural salon of Danilo Moncada Zarbo di Monforte and Claudio Caruselli, Action n°27 – Incarnazione by Gio Montez took place, realized in collaboration with performer Violet’Or. The intervention was conceived at the invitation of Prince Danilo Moncada, who asked the artist to offer a demonstration of his research and to bring, in a living form, the meaning and practice of action art into a cultivated and convivial context.The evening began without formal signals: the audience, gathered in the salon, was conversing and sharing wine. Without announcing the start of the performance, Gio Montez gradually extinguished the lights in the room, directing attention toward the fireplace, the only source of illumination left. This silent gesture marked the opening of the action, transforming the domestic space into a stage. The artist seated himself before the fire with his notebook, opening it to a blank page. He then began to utter a stream of words that seemed to be read while being written: everything Montez wrote was simultaneously spoken aloud, revealing the scene as it was created. Written and spoken word coincided, generating a text that exists and consumes itself in real time. Present in the room, Violet’Or listened to a script that did not exist, never heard before. While Gio Montez wrote the scene, she embodied it. The artwork in progress was the scene itself, revealed by the soft light of the fireplace and the astonishment of the audience. Body and word intertwined in a simultaneous process of writing and incarnation. The nude and sensual body of Violet’Or, caressed by the light and heat of the flames, became the incarnation of beauty and desire, as well as of the primal power of fire and the scene itself. The performer moved to the “fiery” words of Montez, making visible the passage from idea to act, from language to flesh. The action concluded with a gesture of withdrawal: Violet’Or, suddenly overtaken by modesty about her nudity, exited the stage, returning the salon to its original state and leaving the audience suspended between revelation and disappearance.
Action n°27 – Incarnazione is a radical experiment on the incarnation of the artwork, where writing does not precede action but emerges with it, and where the body becomes the place in which thought takes form. The intervention confirms Gio Montez’s research on the boundary between word, gesture, and presence, transforming the cultural salon into a poetic and ritual device.
ecclesiastical incarnatio, -onis; see incarnare]
In general, the act by which a spiritual being, most often divine, assumes a physical body; in particular, in Christianity, the hypostatic union realized in Christ of human nature and divine nature in the single Person of the Word: the mystery of the Incarnation; in chronological reckoning: the year 1700 from the Incarnation (formerly “from the fruitful” or “from the salvific Incarnation”), calculated according to the “style of the Incarnation” or “of the Annunciation” (see Annunciation). With reference to other religions: the incarnations of Vishnu, the incarnations of the Buddha.
Figurative. A vivid and evident representation of a concept in art: the incarnation of an idea in a plastic image. More commonly, personification: many saw in him the incarnation of their ideal.
Archaic. a. Complexion. b. Flesh tone, in painting.