Description:
Tarot of the Yellow Vortex proves once again this versatile artist can express himself in contrasting
styles while always remaining true to himself and full of intensity no matter the medium.
From the colorful and joyful
I Tarocchi dell’Iride Tarocchi
(Tarot of the Rainbow) to the wickedly playful collages of
Tarocchi Dell'Archetipo Blu
(Blue Archetype Tarot);
Claudio Parentela's latest endeavor is something I affectingly refer to as the
Divine Doodles Deck.
It reminds me nostalgically of the meditative process I always found both hypnotic and invigorating since
I was a young lass bored to tears in
school and prone to such dizzy doodling. Mr. Parentela has a knack for hiding symbolic nuances within these striking designs
of Indian ink. When pressed to express his creative process while making this unusual deck, he
shared:
…I love the tarot... my love began a long time ago ... I don’t know how or when ... I love the absolute opposites, the sharp contrasts, twisted, blurred into a thousand schizophrenics streams, great, small, indecipherable, innocent, guilty ... immediate, impulsive, arcane, anarchic, rebellious.
I love the Black Indian ink ... the white and the black; the knots of my soul …that I have woven with infinite impatience and that I have never allowed anyone to violate nor to understand.
I'm an old weaver, a spider-priest who has surrounded himself with his own web-fortress of crystal ... of the purest, most opaque, incomprehensible and impenetrable kind. The Major Arcana permeate and weave the subtleties of my soul.
I like to surf with my ink between the white and the black and amongst the 1000 grays between. Every thought is a tarot card; every emotion is the Fool, the Hermit, the Chariot, the World, the Moon ....
The Tarot of the Yellow Vortex is my wonderful game of Indian Black Ink.
Night becomes a long eternal day; shadows that accompany my thinking and my art.
The Tarot of the Yellow Vortex shows me the way to never find myself and always lose myself.
An absurd alchemy of improbable gestures.
My web of which only I have the key which I have lost.
Without knowing how, where, when.
Waiting for the me that I've lost.
My birth and my death, colored in white and black.
My inks are my Tarot cards and the game starts every day as a wonderful shamanic journey.
A meditative trance shaped as a brush that thirsts for black and white.
In the leaflet that accompanies the deck, Parentela expresses his thoughts on each of the twenty-two Major Arcana cards in an abstract English, not quite poetry but which if you sit with it long enough; may begin to make the sort of sense that a stream of consciousness is known to do. The text is in all caps, in short, succinct descriptions that seem to be fragments of fleeting thoughts or images dug up from a fuzzy dream state (or a case of the Google translator gone awry). One example of the text is shared while nine cards can also be found below:
IX- The Hermit
"....PASSION REFLECTION BREAK
ME AROUND THE SUN THERE IS
EMPTY BLACK TEARS IN THE
RAIN BLACK BLACK BLACK IS
THE SOIL AS THE EYE OF THE
MOON THAT COOLS THE LIPS..."
This handsome set comes on a bed of soft straw in a sturdy, stained wooden box with golden clasps; which is not only a nice presentation but should prove to keep the deck safely protected. The box lid has the title card stamped with the Museum's official hot wax seal. The box contains the title card, signed & numbered by the publisher, Morena Poltronieri; along with the Yellow Vortex twenty-two Major Arcana trumps and leaflet. This double-sided insert, written in English by the artist shares whimsical and somewhat abstract descriptions of the cards . The deck is recommended for Tarot collectors and those with an affinity for this style of art and theme. You can visit
Claudio Parentela's site (which is no less intense) to view more of his wild & captivating art.
