Hypnos — in the secular world Gilberto Di Benedetto — metaphysical painter and free man, I feel the duty to intervene in the debate that has ignited around the presidency of Pietrangelo Buttafuoco at the Venice Biennale. I speak without proxies, without patrons, without affiliations.
I ask nothing of anyone. I only claim the elementary right to exist as an artist and as a free conscience. In this confused time, where culture is often reduced to a ground of excommunications and small moral tribunals, Buttafuoco’s position represents a rare fact: the courage to defend the freedom of art. Not that freedom proclaimed in words, but the real one, which accepts confrontation, even when uncomfortable. Art is not a diplomatic office and it is not a branch of the parties. Art is a space of risk, of conflict, of incompatible visions that nevertheless must be able to coexist. For this reason, I consider Buttafuoco’s line to be right: open, not close.
Allow the Biennale to remain a place where the cultures of the world can look each other in the eye without the filter of ideological fears. I have never asked permission from the Italian cultural left, often fearful and inclined to transform every difference into a moral ghetto. I have never accepted being cataloged, corrected, or normalized. The artist is not a functionary of consensus.
And if today someone thinks they can transform the Biennale into a moral enclosure where it is decided who can speak and who must remain silent, know that art, when it is true, does not recognize these boundaries. In this sense, the figure of Pietrangelo Buttafuoco deserves respect.
Not because it is infallible, but because it defends a principle that concerns all artists: the right to exist without asking for ideological authorizations. I, Hypnos, will continue to paint and speak in the same way I always have: without ifs and buts. And if necessary, ready to measure myself against anyone — even with that pusillanimous left that prefers to label rather than understand.
Art is not a court. Art is an open field.
