DE MEESTER VAN BELGIË

IT WAS 35 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH WHEN IN THE SLENDER SPRIG OF MISSPENT YOUTH CURRADO MALASPINA AND I FIRST BECAME ACQUAINTED. AS NEW STUDENTS WE WERE BOTH CONSUMED WITH A GLUT OF EARLY ENTHUSIASM HAVING DISCOVERED  AT THE ECOLE SUPÉRIEURE DE GRAVURE ET GRIFFONNAGE IN BRUSSELS THAT OUR TWINNED DESTINY LAY IN THE ARTS.

THOUGH WE BOTH HAVE RADICALLY DEVIATED FROM THE NORMS OF BOOKISH DOGMATISM AND THE BRAVURA OF METICULOUS ACADEMICISM, OUR  EARLY FORMATION IN CLASSICAL DRAFTSMANSHIP HAS PROVEN TO BE INDISPENSABLE. WE OWE OUR SKILLS AND OUR ETHIC TO THE LEGENDARY LIFE DRAWING INSTRUCTOR, PROFESSEUR REGIS KYOMBE.

Régis Kyombé, 1974 (Bibliothèque VanDido, Ghent)

 

Sadly, Kyombé perished in the 1982 Schaerbeek Gauffre Fabriek fire but his sovereign and vital legacy remains intact. The VanDido Library of Ghent has recently published the catalogue raisonné of Kyombé's classroom demonstration drawings and a traveling exhibition has recently opened in Bruges (followed by stops in Montpellier, Wiesbaden, Newark and San Francisco).

Régis Kyombé, 1974 (Bibliothèque VanDido, Ghent)

Régis Kyombé, 1974 (Private collection)

Régis Kyombé, 1974 (Bibliothèque VanDido, Ghent)

Régis Kyombé, 1974 (Bibliothèque VanDido, Ghent)

Régis Kyombé, 1974 (Private collection)

WHO WAS THAT WOMAN?

THE OPENING OF THE SHOW THE GASP OF LOVE IN TERZA RIMA DID NOT GO AS PLANNED.

The resplendently disturbed young woman who in a frothing paroxysm of irrational indignation tore off the gallery wall one of Currado Malaspina's drawings and ripped it into quarters was identified by several attendees as the French chanteuse Venus Anaïs. 

It has been rumored for quite some time that Malaspina and Anaïs' very secret yet very public romance had decayed into a rancid culvert of iniquitous melodrama. Her startling outburst at the April 2nd opening at ALT/SPACE LA may have offered a means by which we can finally decode some of Currado's ravishingly repulsive iconography.

 Anaïs has always felt that she was swindled into submissiveness, seduced into the role of silent siren and toyed into the task of temporary muse. Her sole job was to enable Malaspina to create an explicit visual diary of his amorous athleticism. It now seems fairly certain that the works exhibited in Los Angeles are graphic depictions of a passion long passed. They render Venus Anaïs as a vessel for an empyrean rapture and the ecstatic consummation of Malaspina's rapacious concupiscence. 

  The coupling has evidently left someone's cup only half full.