Francesco Cabras | BDSM. TECNICHE DI CONSOLAZIONE
From 08/01/2014 To 29/01/2014
20 pictures are exposed here, men and women who practice the BDSM (Bondage-Domination-Sado-Masochism), images where Francesco Cabras (Rome, 1966) underlines the caring aspect, which is reached by mean of an artificial duress and pain.
The role playing within the BDSM practices follows well coded rules: there is a dominant/oppressor and a servant, and rarely the roles are interchangeable. The slave usually chooses his/her master and entrusts him/her with its well being . It’s through the gaze of Cabras that emerges the perception of the extraordinary role assigned, which requires a promptness out of the ordinary.
It’s the tout court care that grants the success of such complex dynamics among human beings who desire, through the annulment of their personality, the humiliation and the pain, to discover themselves e the otherself.
Great care is given in the choice of partners, in arranging the scene where the act takes place, in the instruments‘ selection. The subjugated puts its complete trust in the dominator, asks to be taken care. This caring is modulated by observing the similarities and the differences of the partner, the body as a whole, with its wrinkles and weariness. The erotic meaning is immune from the fleshly standards that are used in pornography, where there is not care or regard, but there is a commercial and egotistic exploitation of the sex. For who performs the BDSM rituals, these are the greatest expression of reciprocal generosity. And this is tacit and strengthen by the a-priori choice.
Cabras modulates with nearly tenderness, in its photography, this bulky loves for art, including the Seventh. Observing the images, the group pictures in particular, it’s impossible not to think of Caravaggio for the painting, Pasolini and Cronenberg for the cinema. (Francesco is a director and he exploits his eclecticism with nonchalance).
The images follow an accurate Caravaggio’s structure, regarding to the representation and stylistic expression of lights and shapes. Cabras has already envisaged in his mind the scenario that he likes to donate, he researches it through the gestures and the glances according to the structured-mental canvas.
He gains, he pillages the reality of the “extra-ordinaries” the aptitude raped by all great artists, but there is the additional of the flexible attitude of the consenting subjects.
To be revealed become the counterbalance of the self imposed emargination, ot the obligatoriness to practice the BDSM in secret places.
Sometimes we perceive the Pasolini’s attitude for the grotesque, but without the mercenary aspect of the actors enrolement.
We taste the deviances that Cronenberg displays in the scenes in Crash, during the vision of the movie however remain the perception of unreality, that descends by H24 sexual inclinations of the stylish protagonists. The roman photographer doesn’t conceal, he rather put an accent, to the imperfection of the bodies, the no-more young breast and bulky booty, and it is therefore not hard to imagine the very same protagonist of Cabras´images casting off the De Sade´s Mask to go back of their daily errands, which we can imagine as modest.
Raffaella De Chirico Gallery is also preparing a monographic catalogue which collect some Cabras cycles of works, among them BDSM.