Massimo Furlan
"When I was little, I knotted a handkerchief around my neck and, in pyjamas, I jumped on my bed thinking that I was Superman. And when I played football, it was in my room, where I scored the most wonderful goals in the world in front of my radio." Massimo Furlan has created shows from his childhood memories in which kitsch and the sacred, humour, philosophy and poetry are blended with wittiness and facetiousness. Whether he is replaying, with or without a ball, the France-Germany semi-final of the 1982 Football World Cup on the real grass of the Parc des Princes stadium (Number 10), or dons the panoply of a super hero in (love story) Superman, it is biography that is at the centre of his work. All his shows draw their source from his personal history: that of a child of Italian parents, born in Switzerland, that of an adolescent like any other. An intimate memory that crosses that of a generation and touches the collective emotion, that Massimo Furlan causes to be reborn by lending it his body, by prolonging images that come out of each individual's imagination. Daring impossible wagers and drawing from them moments of truth that are both confusing and shattering: herein lies the force of this artist and his universe in which the humorous is always weighed down with seriousness. Massimo Furlan premiered in the framework of Sujets à vif at the 2008 Festival d'Avignon with Singer rather than Actor: a short form in which he confused the issue by mixing false associate artists, a real singer and real philosophers for a series of booby-trapped but seriously enriched discussions on family ties.
ADB, April 2010