Oreste Baldini

@oreste.baldini

Rome-based artist Oreste Baldini’s unique practice deals with one theme only: fish. Intended as a representation of a common experience, an archetype, a universally significant origin, the image of fish was very much present in Magna Graecia – and therefore in Sicily too – and was celebrated in ichtyomancy, a rite performed by priests to reveal the future and interpret the present. The artist gives continuity to this ritual, fishing from ancient ages his bronze, iron and mixed media works.

An ocean of different meanings emerges from this research: the fish, as a life emblem with powers of regeneration and knowledge of the unknown, becomes a link between man and divinity. It’s a kind of bridge, represented by votive stones depicting fish with their heads pointing to the sky, in a vertical thrust that drives them towards spirituality in the act of renouncing matter.

In Oreste Baldini’s bronzes, the fascinating use of colour highlights the green patinas coating the fish, in sharp contrast with the shiny golden insides, to stress the preciousness, the richness within this carrier of messages. All gifts that have to be sought and discovered, gifts that often are gained through pain and toil: the glistening fishbone.

The entire series of broken fish expresses the redeeming value of this icon, its power of devotion and revelation, indeed the fish has great prominence in the Christian iconography. The believers are fish and the holy water of christening is the vital element leading to the secure harbour: the Church. Christ himself is the sacrificial fish and, at the same time, the fisher of souls.

The Dag Gadol that swallows Jonah represents the instrument of rebirth, those three days and three nights spent inside the fish prelude to the accomplishment of Jonah’s mission. A plunge in the depths of his soul to bring to completion the renewing, resurrecting process. To Baldini, this is a landing place and, at the same time, a start, in which beginning and end are joined and become one.