RAUL GABRIEL

TAPELAND

Curated by Paolo Bolpagni

In perfect harmony with the mechanisms of thought of T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece “The Wasteland”, marvelously echoed in an interjection later revived by Charles Baudelaire «You! Hypocrite lecteur! – mon semblable, – mon frère!», this exhibition proposes a reflection on the fragmentation of aesthetical languages which, through the dismemberment of every possible “common parlance” has engendered a complex and manifold scenario.

Raul Gabriel’s artworks themselves, thus basically sharing an underlying attitude, move in the wake of that wide variety, starting from their typologies ranging from painting to digital print, from videoart to works built upon tapes and polystyrene. The “rhetorical discontinuity” of styles and forms juxtaposition is an opportunity for the artist to bring forth the nostalgia for a heroic past of humanity.

It also hints at the intellectual game, at the hybridization of sounds and imagery, sign and meaning, because behind it all stands the writing.

Looking at the artwork, the territory appears empty. Then, the paper tape outlines presences to be deciphered. Deconstructed forms and colors impose themselves over – and thanks to – the chaos, in the attempt to provide a vision of reality through an aesthetical transformation of the materials used, which are now intended as a new nature, taking into account every individual inclination.

This exhibition tries to rethink the relation between existence and art as a cohesive pair, able to enact the encounter between spiritual and materic, form and content in order to allow everyone to give their own interpretation and establish their own set of personal symbols that are transversal to language.