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Tension and opposition, the characteristics of life itself, underpin the artistic expression of Xavier Mazzarol. His works are reflections on human anxiety and mental/physical fragility/stability. Xavier Mazzarol is primarily a conceptual artist; his practice includes sculpture, installation, photography, painting, and performance. 

Using everyday objects as media constitutes the artist’s ongoing commitment to blurring the line between art and life. By using common materials such as glass bottles (Cold Song 2019; Untitled/green; Untitled/brown, 2018; Penner/green; Penner/brown, 2017), plastic bags (Bag Bag 2017), or clothing pieces (Glück 2017), Xavier Mazzarol elevates the ordinary and quotidian. 

“to place everyday life at the center of everything. Every project begins from it and every realization returns to it to acquire its real significance. Everyday life is the measure of all things.”
—Guy Debord, Theory of the Dérive and Other Situationist Writings, 1996 

Home in Transit 2016—an entire displaced kitchen unit hung onto a wall—is a sizeable sculptural example of Xavier Mazzarol’s interest in changing familiar situations by narrating alternative realities. The charged sphere between fact and fiction is the artistic realm in which he operates. His performative works (Fall Action I; Fall Action II, 2018; and a 2011 piece in his solo exhibition behaving like helter-skelter) involve stunt artists, professional performers, and bystanders whose actions can be planned or spontaneous. The acts are fictional moments anchored in reality.   

“Replace the materials of paint or stone with those of life itself—actions […]—and suddenly the possibility of creating not art but life begins to take shape.”
—Lori Waxman, Keep Walking Intently, 2017

The body and its relationship to the surrounding space, to its own wellbeing, and consciousness, or psyche is at the core of Xavier Mazzarol’s practice. By using body parts (Hands on Hands Off 2016; Stand to Pee Fountain 2015; Opened Hand 2014), he grants them agency, pars pro toto.  

“The fate of our bodies is, as Baudrillard once noted, to become prostheses.”
—Philipp Kleinmichel, Exhibition Text Xavier Mazzarol: Stand to Pee, 2015

Wellbeing is complex. It oscillates between individuals’ physical and mental states and can be disrupted by societal mechanisms. Health is a questionable notion in our current-day context: our lives/identities are driven by optimisation, online relationships, success, and control. It is the bodily and spiritual loss of control, given external influences, that fascinate Xavier Mazzarol. 

“Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other pace.” —Susan Sonntag, Illness as Metaphor, 1978 

He decodes behaviour and represents his observations of complex emotional states in a clear, rational way. This sense of rationality and strictness of form is visible in the three large sculptural works Between; D’Enfer, 2019 and If You Like Watching Me Brushing My Teeth, Please Do! 2015.

The aura of the enigmatic works transcends their physical state; they stand in a given space like symbols or metaphors, like elements of reified poetry.  

Text by Katerine Niedinger