Amanita, amarguísima amanita… (a propósito de Musa Paradisíaca de José Alejandro Restrepo)

Abstract

The following text is a commentary by philosopher Bruno Mazzoldi of José Alejandro Restrepo’s most recent exhibition and montage of Musa Paradisiaca(Bogotá, FLORA, 2015). The installation was accompanied this time, in the third floor of the gallery, by a series of works that evoke the history of the conception of the original montage (see the images included in this article), together with the engravings of the lost paradise and photographs by the artist staging Adam and Eve with the “forbidden fruit” (in Restrepo’s work, a banana). Mazzoldi combines the reference to this ‘forbidden fruit’ to Restrepo’s use of hallucinogen mushrooms (Amanita Muscaria) as a frame and a framework for his commentary.