Herod is dancing. His expensive robe is open, showing most of his naked body. His head, arms and legs all have multiple images, as Giobbi uses this \u201ccubistic\u201d method to capture movement. The two heads betray Herod\u2019s indulgence with food and wine. In Wilde\u2019s play Herod invites Salome to \u201cDip into it thy little red lips, that I may drain the cup\u201d and \u201cbite but a little of this fruit, that I may eat what is left\u201d but Salome refuses. Herod still drinks it and eats everything too. In Giobbi\u2019s image we see the remains of red wine and food all over his face. He\u2019s reached a point of drunkenness when reason is no longer bothering him. He touches his right head in a moment of recognition of his madness but he can\u2019t stop dancing just now. Jewels cover his body. All of his fingers are richly ringed. One of his fingernails is badly bitten. He has worries. Metal necklaces surround his body like snakes.<\/p>\n Herod dances on, his many arms and legs madly moving. \u201cSomething terrible will happen\u201d is like a refrain in the play and looking at Herod\u2019s dance, that\u2019s how we feel.\u00a0 The music is there with its visible rhythm but it is not happy at all, more like the \u201cbeating of the wings of the angel of death.\u201d Herod\u2019s dance has an intensity similar to one of Giobbi\u2019s musical compositions, Khe Sanh.<\/p>\n Giobbi was a composer of classical music before he turned to visual arts.\u00a0 As he said, in music \u201ctime contains every move we make, everything exists in time, develops over time. I love the idea behind cubism. I love the brutality of it, the honest kind of brutality of it. These are like getting multiple moments of time; doing the direct opposite of (music), like compressing multiple moments in one cathartic image.\u201d In the way that music is composed of single notes, Giobbi\u2019s collages are created from thousands of little pieces. He takes portraits of his models, sometimes as many as 300 photographs, from different perspectives, enlarges them on the computer (but doesn\u2019t modify them) prints them and then cuts them into small pieces in order to create his compositions. He uses boards as a base and covers the finished work with a thin layer of beeswax to keep the pieces in place and so they will also \u201csmell good.\u201d<\/p>\n However fascinating his method is, Giobbi\u2019s main focus is the character of his models: \u201cI look for people with a free spirit and strong character; who stand for what they do with great conviction and passion.\u201d This search often leads him to well-known personalities such as artists Joe Barnes and Alice O\u2019Malley, filmmaker Fisher Stevens, performance-artist Penny Arcade or cult figures such as Indian Larry, the Chopper Shaman or the transgender Amanda Lepore. Modeling for Giobbi is a commitment, since it takes about a year until he reaches the point that he knows them really well and feels that he can get into their skin or more likely under their skin. That\u2019s when he finally gets to the actual work. When there\u2019s no secret left, he recreates the person in his work not as an idealized version but the \u201cfull truth.\u201d<\/p>\n Joe Barnes<\/em>\u2019 blue eyes from a larger than life-size portrait look out at us from his distorted face. At first my impression of him was as a somewhat judgemental person because of his pouting second mouth, cold eyes and the fact that he seems to be talking. Not true at all. Barnes, a New York painter, creates opaque, monochromatic, meditative compositions with silent beauty in his white loft. He is soft-spoken and very gentle. In Giobbi\u2019s portrait, Barnes\u2019 eyes are watery because the paint and light he uses hurt them and cold because he is a very driven and disciplined artist.<\/p>\n At first sight, you can see that Fisher Stevens<\/em> is a nice guy, someone you would love to have a drink with. He seems to be a big dreamer whose head is in the clouds, surrounded by the artistic haze of cigarette smoke, while he tells sophisticated and funny stories about the characters he brings into life in his films.\u00a0 Stevens is an accomplished film persona with many movies to his credit including Short Circuit, Hackers, his documentary The Cove and his debut as the director of Stand Up Guys. When he talks about his work his favourite words are: \u201cit was so much fun\u201d or an \u201camazing experience.\u201d Giobbi got him absolutely right: a nice, amazing, funny person.<\/p>\n Herod is not the only one who\u2019s dancing in Giobbi\u2019s compositions. One of this subjects is the photographer, Alice O\u2019Malley<\/em>. She chooses her models from New York\u2019s club culture, and always strips them down in order to recreate them in blinding whiteness. Inspired by this method Giobbi stripped down O\u2019Malley as she dances in the collages depicting her. There is a lot of stripping down and nakedness in Giobbi\u2019s works. His images of the seven deadly sins (SE7N<\/em>) are embodiments of unfortunate passions that are pregnant with many evils. They show the aesthetics of the morbid, its cruelty and its beauty. The Seven Deadly Sins are an old theme, depicted by many artists through the centuries, Hieronymus Bosch among them. When moral codes are established, sins come into existence as well. It seems that rules irritate people to the point when they break them and they can\u2019t resist temptations either. It doesn\u2019t really matter if those rules come from the bible or the civil code since, as Freud wrote, \u201cWe are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself\u201d (Civilization and Its\u00a0Discontents<\/em>, 1929). Humans are rebellious spirits. In our times, it is very difficult to rebel since there\u2019s hardly anything left to rebel against. We don\u2019t have any strong ideology to follow, any worthy morality to oppose. As we mirror the world we live in, our souls are fragmented and contaminated.<\/p>\n Giobbi\u2019s sinners, just like their predecessors in George Grosz\u2019s Ecce Hommo<\/em> series from the 1920s, are ugly. The obese body in Gluttony<\/em> is surrounded by fast food containers while she is munching on a slice of pizza. But instead of satisfaction this abundance causes only sadness as we can see in the figure\u2019s eyes. The man in Envy<\/em> surrounds himself by walls for some privacy. He is trying to escape his public image by ripping his clothes off. He turns his back to the world, his hands held in praying position, his loneliness apparent. Faces fill all the small windows so he can\u2019t escape the preying eyes of others. What do they envy in him? For sure, whatever position and richness he might have, it doesn\u2019t make him happy. He is not the sinner, the onlookers are. In Pride<\/em>, performer Penny Arkade is dancing in front of a mirror with transgender celebrity Amanda Lepore. Arkade, who is famous for her intriguing solo shows like Bad Reputation<\/em>, Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore!<\/em> and always makes the \u201cweird to win,\u201d shows her aging body here without regret. Lepore, whose perfect female body is considered the \u201cmost expensive body on Earth\u201d according to the money spent on plastic, happily sings and dances like there is no tomorrow. In their need for exposure Giobbi\u2019s models become overexposed and sometimes too naked, making the viewers into voyeurs.<\/p>\n Herod is still dancing in his Dionysian haze. Does he really dance for Salome? I don\u2019t think so. His dance is no longer filled with desire but becomes a bottomless pit of lust, a burning itch, more like a disease than a pleasure. It is greed that moves him, wanting more and more, never to be satisfied. This modern version of Herod is being consumed by his own needs. Giobbi\u2019s characters are unmasked guests at the masquerade of our times, and his Herod, this overfed, oversexed antihero, leads this mad cavalcade.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.artoronto.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/rsz_chambliss_giobbi_tanz_fur_mich_salome_large_self-portrait_2010_collage_bees_wax_on_aluminum_panel_92_x_68_inches_courtesy_of_the_artist.jpg\" "\\"rsz_chambliss_giobbi_tanz_fur_mich_salome_large_self-portrait_2010_collage_bees_wax_on_aluminum_panel_92_x_68_inches_courtesy_of_the_artist\\"")
<\/a>Chambliss Giobbi, TANZ FUR MICH, SALOME!<\/em> Large, (Self-Portrait), 2010. Collage, Bees Wax on Aluminum Panel, 92\u201d x 68\u201d. Courtesy of the artist.<\/p>\n<\/a>Chambliss Giobbi in his studio in New York. Courtesy of the artist.<\/p>\n<\/a>Cbambliss Giobbi,\u00a0 HEAD OF JOE BARNES 3, <\/em>2003. Collage, Bees Wax on Aluminum Panel, 60\u201d x 60\u201d. Courtesy of the artist.<\/p>\n<\/a>Chambliss Giobbi, TINY PORTRAIT OF FISHER STEVENS 6<\/em>, 2013. Collage, Bees Wax on Masonite, 7\u201d x 5\u201d. Courtesy of the artist.<\/p>\n<\/a>Chambliss Giobbi, TINY PORTRAIT OF ALICE O\u2019MALLEY 7<\/em>, 2013. Collage, Bees Wax on Masonite, 7\u201d x 5\u201d. Courtesy of the artist.<\/p>\n<\/a>Chambliss Giobbi, SE7N: PRIDE<\/em>, 2011 – 12. Collage, Bees Wax on Tycore, 92\u201d x 56\u201d. Private Collection, Toronto.<\/p>\n<\/a>Chambliss Giobbi, SE7N: ENVY<\/em>, 2011 – 12. Collage, Bees Wax on Tycore, 92\u201d x 56\u201d. Courtesy of the artist.<\/p>\n