Florisa Sciannamea
Expert in fashion and costume, lecturer in Fashion Design at the University of Bari
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I met Davide Cristofaro many years ago… he was a student of mine on the Fashion Design course at the Victoria Academy… I understood at once that that boy with the sweet smile and the dreamy eyes had a gift: the gift of being able to see “beyond”… … Beyond the commonplaces, the conventions, the obsolete and limiting rules.
His horizons are many, and out of reach for those who cannot “see”, but close and palpable for him. Warm winds from the East, the scent of ginger and curry, magical mystery and sensual allure seep into the weave of his canvases and of his rustling hand-painted silks, with an elegant and harmonious local contamination…. yes… because Davide proudly claims his belonging to his Land and, with the sensibility that sets him apart, has succeeded in finding a thread that runs between his South and the sand of the desert, the outline of the dunes, the pure, defined colours of the East and of Africa, so dear to him and so perceptible through his creations.
The same magical contaminations are evident in the clothes Davide designs for hyper-feminine women, yet never vulgar ones… soft, feline, mysterious and sensual women who evoke a mood of sophisticated carnality to be seized… but only to contemplate them like madonnas of other times. The religious feeling of many of Davide’s works, too, confirms how he absorbs and re-presents, through all 360 degrees, the material and spiritual universe on which he feeds and from which he draws his great charge of positive creative energy.
Le Cirque
One of his works, shown in Bangkok, left me dumbfounded… it is the image of a clown… It would have been easy to fall into banality, but Davide gave it an interpretation so materially alive and so extraordinarily moving as to make original and unique a theme treated endlessly by professionals and amateurs alike. Superb, the combination of colours… the light has been trapped and radiates from every pigment of the canvas… a blend of great technique, heart, sensibility… It seems reductive to me to call Davide Cristofaro a fashion designer or a painter or a decorator… I would say simply a “CREATIVE” of great talent, a pure artist…. of whom his Land and all of us must be proud….
Keep going, Davide, along your own road… … there is a light out there, and you know how to seize it.
