The artistic output of Giovanni Giaretta narrates the ordinary in an unexpected way, telling of a world made of minor gestures and situations that offer the revelation of an unexpected reality, another dimension. The artist demonstrates his interest in an anthropology of everyday life, at times pursuing hypothetical scientific principles to make a more filmic perception of the real become clearly visible.
In New Orleans Giaretta starts his investigation with a text that Roger Caillois wrote
together with Georges Bataille in 1934 at the College of Sociology: ‘La mante
religieuse. De la biologie à la psychanalyse‘. This essay is an anthropological research on how mankind relates to the Praying Mantis as an evil creature, or a ghost, able to kill just with its gaze. The manner in which Caillois and Bataille use the paranormal as a tool for analysis informs Giaretta’s research into how horror and fear are related to specific types of architecture, looking for the uncanny as described by Anthony Vidler in his essay ‘The Architectural Uncanny. Essays in the Modern Unhomely‘ from 1992.