Artist Statement - Moustache Sauvage
Francesco Tortorella | Artist | Art Director | Award-Winning Director
With an unapologetic representation of sexual phantasies, taboos, and vulnerabilities, my work wants to highlight freedom of expression in its purest form.
A blunt sense of emancipation can in fact be found in the depiction of the human body with its natural imperfections and body hair and in particular the female one.
This is a clear critique of society’s physical standards, which are an aberration of reality, and only one of the many social conventions that are imposed on us. A brutal sensual frankness and a disarming sense of sarcasm in my work underline our inhibitions and fears, forcing the spectator to face them, and demonstrating how life must and need to extend beyond these imposed stereotypes.
The same call for freedom can be found in some of my political work, where I addressed topics such as feminism, the annexation of Crimea, or the latest conflicts in Afghanistan. Another recurring theme of mine is the representation of hands, which are without a doubt both a universal and personal metaphor for freedom and a tool that can represent who we are because of what we decide to use them for. A faceless portrait of our humanity.
Although having a predilection for classical print, I work with different techniques to represent the individual narrative of each subject, and I find that digital media allows me more immediacy. This grants me to capture the instant that I want to portray, creating a recognizable style between all of my works, which are characterized by quick and unaltered raw lines.
