English version

As you step in the Luigi Einaudi Campus main hall, you’ll se a gigantic image that dominates the all area. It is a naked an muscular figure based on a drawing by Burne Hogarth, an American illustrator who’s drawings are in the books thousands of art’s students, all over the world, have studied upon to learn the human drawing techniques.

The image, with its extremely powerful physicality, evokes Rodin’s Le Penseur, even though it’s obviously made with a different technique and presented with a different posture. As much as Rodin’s famous sculpture, this image emanates a physical power that slowly turns into the power of intellect and poetry.
The man, depicted in this moment of transition, is holding a glowing electric wire with a luminescent plug at its end.
While the man is a bi-dimensional drawing, the wire is a three-dimensional object that interacts with him.
These two different layers symbolize the strength that will endure in time, represented by the man, and the frailty of contemporary living, depending on a plug in the technology era.
Whenever we believe knowledge is going to be shaped by new communication tools, we should take a moment to think of the frailty that this new way of living brings along.
In the beginning there is just a flow of energy, electricity, and without it our new world could no longer exist.
On another level you could read a metaphor of the human existence. But there is more, because we don’t know if the wire will be plugged in, generating new ideas, or if the man just plugged it out to take a moment to think, to press pause.
This installation is a tribute to the work of Burne Hogarth, who drew the famous Tarzan comic, first published in the 50’s in the USA and then all over the world.
It was natural to choose a young student, Giulio Saccardo, of the Academy of Arts of Turin, to draw the image, to underline the learning aspects of Hogarth’s work, as well as of the Campus itself.

This will be the Genius Loci inside the amazing architectonic structure hosting the new Campus. The inner power of the image, the meanings it carries along, will communicate daily with the young students roaming the Luigi Einaudi University Campus, stimulating their thoughts as they walk in and out the square. This image will constantly remind them to take a moment to think and to press pause on this acceleration of time we live in.