Pelletti sets Western and African classicisms in dialogue. The helmeted Ares is crowned not with the traditional plume but with an African sceptre from the artist’s own collection—both a formal substitution and a conceptual one. Antiquity not as quotation but as material to be reactivated in the present. The beautifully banded onyx gives the head a soft inner glow; its natural strata veil and reveal the features so the stone becomes an active voice rather than a neutral support.

 

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