Falling Armenians #8

Patrick Webb utilizes the circular tondo format to frame tumbling male figures, continuing his decades-long engagement with the commedia dell'arte character Punchinello. Marked by his signature red nose and white conical hat, Punchinello acts as a tragi-comic Everyman, intimately intertwined with a second fleshy figure in a state of vulnerable freefall beneath a darkened archway. The inclusion of a discarded teddy bear introduces a note of lost innocence to the composition. Through these falling bodies, Webb builds on the lineage of G.D. Tiepolo, using the masked outsider to navigate narratives of intimacy and mortality against the historical backdrop of the AIDS epidemic.