By Doug Rickard

It would seem that Antoine D'Agata is an empty shell walking, a living thing yes, a tortured adventuring heartbeat, yes... perhaps a sort of hybrid man-beast animal behind glass... one that seeks, that follows its urges and never finds satisfaction... the taste for blood is potent, the drive inside is ongoing, he keeps going to find more. The vice appearing to own him, the urge appearing to torment him, he goes to find more, again, again... but the fullness never comes, only flavored food, feeding him for a moment but the taste fades quickly, fleeting taste and then gone, poof... the empty always wins. At times, he thinks that he has found something to satisfy for good and then once it is in the mouth, it quickly becomes nothing... just ashes and empty souls evaporating into the memory.




And just what does an empty, driven, prostitute fueled-livin evaporating taste look like? If you step into an inferno, if you willingly give up the foundation and step off the cliff, into the vortex... if you seek something that will never satisfy, if you f-k to spite love, if you feed your demons and spin without control, when you have nothing to fill you up... when you live inside of the drug, what does that look like? From outside in, from inside out, twist together the inside and make it the out... morph the empty into something palpable, mix in the shell of the man... the flesh of the used... wrap it in a cloak of lovelessness and self inflicted psychological wounds... give your inferno the fuel that it needs to keep burning you alive, to keep sucking you in, to keep sucking the world in... then step back and look at the page. This is Antoine and his beautiful photographs.






Look at the muck, at the tar... at the black, at the ashe, at the junk in his head... I think that I can see inside of his mind, but I can't... I can only see the evidence, I can only see the art. I can see the mind as a print, as a pixel. Does the work reflect the man? Does the man reflect the work? Does the man serve as a symbol for the work or does the work serve as a symbol for the man? Who is leading who? Who tells the truth, who is the liar? Either way, it is beautiful, oh man, is it beautiful. Again the art, yes... some ticket to ride, to look at flesh, the emptiness, the shell, the black hole livin', the vortex of selfishness driven, but in the hands of a man like Antoine, beauty cannot help but come. In the pit of pain, in the darkness of the man who has embraced the ugly urges of the human, the fallen human, the one that chooses the wrong path... the path is chosen for him... in the man that has given himself over to his drives, let himself go into the mental traps of his biology and his head, the thirst for inner peace is perhaps there yet the peace flees from him. Beauty has somehow come. Beauty from the black.... power from the putrid, flesh as a flower, a dead flower that still seeks the light, but it is dead - not yet gone, but decaying. It has little hope but it sits, the petals crumpled but lovely in their shriveled descent, waiting to return into the ground.

As human beings, we can relish in the gift that is art... in our ability to enjoy something emanating from the pit of the empty heart, the empty dark.

I had planned to do something lengthy for this man, weave in facts... but instead, I just had to write... what else can you do for something like Antoine.

Regards,

Doug Rickard




ASX CHANNEL: Antoine D'Agata

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