Twin Intoxicant by Giovanni Intra

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Twin Intoxicant

Twin Intoxicant

Artist

Giovanni Intra
Production Date

1992
Medium

mixed media on paper
Size

2120 x 1500 mm
Credit

Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2025
Accession Number

C2025/1/9
Accession Date

11 Nov 2025
Department

New Zealand Art
Classification

Work on Paper
Collection

Chartwell
Chartwell Notes

Twin Intoxicant belongs to a cycle of large-scale works on paper produced in 1992 and originally hung edge to edge. Across this series—which also includes Clinic of Phantasms, in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa—Giovanni Intra scattered provocative phrases and motifs that evoke health and sickness: “pharmakon,” “a medical report,” “I convulse,” “Corps humain.”

Like much of Intra’s work, and that of the Surrealist artists who deeply influenced him, Twin Intoxicant suggests the form of an x-ray. Wandering lines traverse top to bottom like contorted veins, interrupted by rectilinear instruments that gently evoke surgical pins holding together a vital organ.