Nimu Dormi
Biennale de Renava, Bonifacio, 3rd edition
With works by Alex Foxton.
At the southern tip of Corsica, in the heart of one of the most beautiful nature reserves of the Mediterranean and its heritage treasures, De Renava celebrates the best of international and corsican contemporary art.
Establishing a dialogue between artworks, architecture and nature, De Renava offers experiences of discovery, reflection and contemplation, offering alternative visions of Corsica, the Mediterranean and the world of tomorrow.
De Renava is a not-for-profit organization, recognised as being of public interest, which is committed to the protection of urban, historical and environmental heritage. From the Genoese citadel of Bonifacio to the Land of the Lords of the Alta Rocca, De Renava operates in exceptional settings that it aims to safeguard and enhance.
« In this series of paintings I have tried to synthesise many of the elements of my practice over the past few years — particularly the idea of the body as the primary site of experience, the carrier of identity, emotion and transformation.
The theme of the Biennale, celebration as transgression, inspired me to make scenes loosely based on moments of religious transformation — Annunciation, Deposition, Resurrection — inhabited by contemporary archetypes: sailors, matadors. These figures suggest that the approach toward the divine, the moment of losing oneself in something larger, is not the exclusive territory of the sacred but belongs to all of us — in celebration, in eroticism, in collective ritual. What interests me is the moment when the body can no longer contain what it feels — when the performance of identity cracks open and something more ungovernable spills through. The smaller paintings of sailors losing their heads follow this logic literally: beheading as the ultimate surrender of the rational self, the sovereign moment we seek in festivity, in desire, in religious ecstasy, and (for a painter) in the act of painting itself.
This is emphasised by the formal language of the work: colour as the vehicle of heightened emotion, the figure treated as flat and exaggerated (pushed to the point where the body exceeds its own outline), the surface alternating between matte and glossy, impasto and flatness, and the use of glitter — excess made material, the carnivalesque and the sacred held in the same gesture. »
Alex Foxton
Alex Foxton
Deposition, 2026
Oil and glitter on canvas
57 1/8 x 78 3/4 inches