APE – MAN – APE ( Short + Curatorial explanation )
Man calls himself rational, moral, and superior.
Yet no animal is capable of the scale of destruction that we cause daily.
The species that calls itself the most intelligent.
No animal destroys ecosystems.
No animal devises ideologies to kill en masse.
No animal rationalizes cruelty.
No animal experiments on other animals.
The gorilla and primates – our relatives – live in small social groups, seldom wars, without ideologies, without industrial destruction.
Man, on the other hand, has created religious wars, genocide, ecological collapse, and weapons of mass destruction.
Perhaps intelligence is not proof of superiority.
Perhaps it is proof of danger.
Who is truly the civilized animal here? Neo Spaziale MOBILE 2026.3.15 – Homo Superius
100 x 30 cm
Resin, thorns, mirrored copper.
Price upon request.
CURATORIAL EXPLANATION
Homo Sapiens – Self-Proclaimed Superior Species
This sculpture confronts the paradox of human superiority.
Although man defines himself as the most rational and developed being on Earth, it is precisely that intellectual capacity that has made an unprecedented scale of destruction possible.
Central to the work is a gorilla skull – a direct reminder of our evolutionary kinship with the great primates, including the gorilla.
Unlike human civilizations, gorillas live in relatively stable social structures in which violence rarely takes the systematic or ideological form that characterizes human history.
The skull is tightly wrapped in transparent foil, a visual gesture that suggests both protection and suffocation. The surrounding thorny branches refer to ritual and religious iconography, including the crown of thorns from the Christian story of Jesus Christ. Within this context, the sculpture transforms into a contemporary martyr: not a divine figure, but nature itself.
The viewer sees their own silhouette in the plated fragments.
Through 360-degree rotation, the work rejects a fixed hierarchy of perspective. Every position reveals new tensions between vulnerability and aggression, between nature and human intervention. The thorns form both a protective structure and a prison.
With this, Neo Spaziale – Homo Superius poses an uncomfortable question:
If man is the most intelligent animal, why has precisely this intelligence led to systems of violence, exploitation, and ecological destruction that hardly occur in the animal world?
The work functions as a memorial: a sculptural reflection on the thin line between civilization and barbarism.