They are deliberately simple, almost childlike, and are defined by their exaggeratedly deep eye sockets, like small caverns where logical thinking has disappeared. The word “Pinokels” derives loosely from the English people, reinterpreted into German, slightly twisted, playful, ironic.
Each of these characters embodies a certain attitude, a fleeting moment, a fragment of society. They are raw, always silly, sometimes sad, small caricatures of ourselves. Despite their simplicity, they carry a sense of tragedy, something that cannot be smiled away. A problem of our time.
All of them are carved from marble, mostly Carrara marble, and patinated with acrylic paint. This gives them an artificial, almost plastic surface, like toys. That’s precisely what interests me: when marble, this eternal material, suddenly appears cheap, and the cheap begins to be honest.
Over the years, the Pinokels have evolved into a kind of species of their own. They sit, run, pose, preach, fumble, celebrate, pray, or post, depending on which madness happens to rule the world.
And within all their exaggeration, there’s always a trace of tenderness. Perhaps that’s their real joke: you laugh at them until you realize they were laughing at you. There’s a quiet sarcasm in their posture: they show us how ridiculous we’ve become. How we sell ourselves, worship ourselves, stage ourselves. The Pinokel is no hero, no victim, he’s the mirror that exposes us while we laugh at him, that you only really understand the world when you exaggerate it.
Then the Pinokel doesn’t lie to us, he simply plays us back. He wears our faces, our gestures, our excuses. He knows that morality has long turned into scenery, and that honesty today is often just another hashtag. Behind his silly grin hides the weariness of a being that has seen too much and still keeps going, because giving up would just be another pose. His eyes are empty, but NOT stupid. Inside those dark hollows sits something that watches us, not with anger, but with a kind of tired curiosity. Maybe the Pinokel is the last innocent creature in a world that wants to explain everything. He doesn’t ask questions anymore; he just points at what’s there.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
The Pinokels also served as the foundation for our FAC Cruxials, and every now and then, one of them is bound to resurface.
Carrara 2008-
