ARLES, FRANCE – The presence of a Léon
Ferrari
retrospective in a church is a paradox verging on the miraculous: here
we have a
famous, ninety-year-old artist who has devoted a large part of his
working life
to studying and implacably criticising the Catholic Church from its
origins up
to the present day. Ferrari’s œuvre foregrounds the contradictions of
the human
condition: the abuses of power and the intolerance, sexual repression,
racism,
violence and authoritarianism that characterise different kinds of
organisations
in contemporary society. In 2009 the Museum
of Modern
Art , MoMA in New
York featured
his work in a major exhibition
with artist Mira Schendel called Tangled
Alphabets.