Mariano Akerman, Prickly Matters (453 Grams of Living Matter), collage, 2009. Each panel 27.5 x 19 cm.
The collage presents two organic entities, with several affinities. They are symmetric yet inverted respect one another. Moreover, they have been separated drastically.
The soft continuity of the curves visible in each of them is punctuated and maybe even cut by sharp triangles, whose meaning in the composition may not be a positive one, if one considers the big red stains that sourround each of them and the almost completely black background. In other words, they have much in common.
Contrary to one may expect, the title of this work has been conceived in English from the very beginning. Prickly Matters recalls the mood described by T.S. Eliot in his "Hollow Men" of 1925. The collage has a significant source of inspiration in a question rised by William Shakespeare in 1596-8: "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" (The Merchant of Venice, act 3, sc. 1).