Draco

A dragon drawn at the scale of a wall — exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Padiglione Italia.

Draco is a studio work by artist Neve, pencil on black cardboard, 100 × 140 cm, created in 2011 and exhibited at the Venice Biennale — Padiglione Italia, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi.

"Draco" is a pencil drawing on black cardboard, 100 × 140 cm, from 2011. It was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in the Italian Pavilion curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, in Sala Nervi, and published in Sgarbi's catalogue "Lo Stato dell'Arte." Two figures — a man and a woman — are locked in a struggle that is also an embrace: hands gripping, bodies pressed together, faces turned away from each other and toward separate darknesses. The tension between them is the subject. It does not resolve. The work represents the conflict between occult power and manifest power — banks, financial institutions, Freemasonry, the hidden architectures that shape the visible world. On the man's back, a constellation of flies traces the shape of Draco: the dragon, the serpent that never sets, the constellation that circles the celestial pole without ever disappearing below the horizon. Always present, always watching. The flies are the tell. What appears to be a passionate human struggle is something older and less visible — the rotation of power itself, patient and permanent, written in the bodies of those who carry it.