Cavaliere Blu
alias Adrian Peter

A codex of the purest meat to be read, as in the cathedrals of old, by soft candlelight while walking along the dark nave. That’s because Adrian’s work is an illuminated manuscript with enormous pages hung up on the walls. So, not a book for perusal, but an architectural poem to go through as if it were a monumental text. A text everyone can look at together, from afar, almost overwhelmed by the swarm of tiny, phantasmagorical, epiphanic manifestations. But, then, one is compelled to draw closer, to pause and savour some precious fragment: on the walls you can see the work is replete with insects (on all the walls of the ancient and mysterious locations) and, with the insects, is the writing in German, incomprehensible and indecipherable, based on Adrian’s codices. The Codex Eroticus of 2022 featured a confused medley overflowing with ghouls, skulls, prehistoric fish, phalluses and crosses. The Codex Insecta of 2025, intended for the same worshippers and followers of the lay religion espoused by Adrian, moves in perfect chaotic continuity but, compared to the Codex Eroticus, presents a more selective and precise canon: many fewer phalluses and many more insects. What remains, everywhere and always, are the same young, feminine figures, scantily clad and buxom. This is the first mysterious revelation: we are not descended from monkeys but from these feminine figures copulating with the insects. That’s why we are simultaneously fragile and dangerous: like the insects, we can be squashed and, like the insects, we oscillate, vibrate, crawl and fly. We crawl and fly: we often crawl but we are also capable of flying, at least in an imaginary capacity. And just like that, anyone can see that these large works on the walls give the impression of being able to soar through the air, evoking the major artistic works of Calder, with figurative nuclei suspended in space, interlinked by invisible threads and poised to move in the breeze. A carousel of fragile, succulent and playful victims squirming slightly in a cobweb reminiscent of compulsion, suffering, the hollowness of their efforts to free themselves, and death. Death, but without tragedy. Because, pride of place in Adrian’s codices, is the special liturgy which feeds on irony and a profound, subversive sarcasm. The coordinator of everything, the designer of it all is in fact a mind which monologues in a state of semi-ironic and surreal lucidity. A surrealist who paints phalluses with a parachute. And the surrealists have always been the masters of derision, mockery and ridicule, indispensable tools to debunk and subvert society’s conventions, moralism, artistic norms and rational

considerations.

​

Adrian uses his codices to refute anything that could curb the imagination, looking to celebrate dreams, the subconscious and the meaningless. His work imposes just one sentiment: macabre, provocative, cynical and derisory humour. Adrian is aware that irony is not just a means of destroying, provoking and disrupting, but also an instrument for creating an alternative to freedom with a playful and transgressive spirit. Hence the choice of insects. A choice which, with regard to the fruition of this codex, stimulates two types of suggestion that go beyond the aesthetic dimension: symbolic and allegorical comprehension. If the interpretation of the symbol is empathic and intuitive, interpreting the allegory calls for intellectual effort. The symbolic fruition activates

archetypes and shared contemporary images: watching the insects, we are often struck by alarming ancestral images, concerning and repellent. By contrast, when watching the go-go girls, we are intrigued and drawn to them. Eroticism excites and attracts, while the insect repels.

 

Watching insects and scantily clad women hybridising together, the recurring obsessive imagery is a type of “entomological fetish”. The Insect codex is thus a frenzy of entomological perversion.

Not only do Adrian’s insects hint at an alien, mysterious and unsettling aesthetic, but also and above all an iconosphere of fetishism. On the one hand, there is the analogy of forms: the smooth, glossy, iridescent carapace, the spindly legs and the compound eyes of some insects evoke visions that can be transposed into fetish clothing and accessories, such as latex, patent leather, straps and high heels. On the other hand, insects represent the symbolism of submission: some are excited by the idea of being "dominated" by nature or being seen as vulnerable and inferior. This fear – or disgust – can transform and morph into a kind of erotic excitement via m echanisms of transgression. An erotic transgression culminating in feminine figures often bound at the wrists, crucified, tortured, dissected, dismembered, but which, at times, are mirrored in the “queens” of the insects, i.e. the female insects with the requisite status to be inseminated and reproduce. The queen is bigger than the other insects and comes from larvae specially fed to become sexually mature.

 

The transgression is also associated with the idea of metamorphosis: some insects, such as butterflies or beetles, undergo transformation phases that can evoke ideas of change, death and rebirth. Some change sex. The gender confusion, the gender gap, also leads to the seductive concept of body horror, creating aesthetics the explore the fusion of human and insect.​ However, in the allegorical fruition, which differs from the symbolic one, the key lies in knowing the titles Adrian has assigned to his works, and especially knowing the texts inscribed under these titles. The title “Zoomorphina” is beautiful and illuminating; it combines and contaminates the concepts of “zoomorphic” and “morphine”, associating these images with analgesics capable of freeing us of pain and anxiety, but also of inducing dependency and addiction. In the texts – partly written in a language that doesn’t exist in reality – there are quotes from the obscene and violent poetry of Till Lindemann, the chronicler Eusebio and the Japanese “futanari” with all the hermaphroditic implications of the “hentai” pornographic genre. There are also passages from “In the Penal Colony”, a short story written by Franz Kafka in October 1914, the famous – and not by coincidence – author of “The Metamorphosis”. This is a story about a strange machine that kills by carving words ever deeper into the victim as a metaphor for literature and an allegory for art, with its capacity to torture together with the pain and ambiguity of knowledge. A machine with the traits of self-destructive power, of justice that begets injustice, of the mysterious order of law and time. In “Femme libellule”, mention is made of Flypaper, a story by Robert Musil describing the impending death of insects caught i n flypaper. And finally there is “Smile”, an emblematic work. As Adrian puts it: “Marquis Posa in Don Carlos says in Act 10: ‘Sire, give you freedom of thought!’. That perfectly explains my art. Feel free and enjoy yourself. Life is too short to be taken seriously.”

​

MAURO PAPA

Direttore,

Polo Culturale Le Clarisse

​

'Codex Insecta‘ from Adrian's Perspective