Artist : Pablo Gentile
Genre : Painting and Sculpture
Period : June 1 till July 20
Everyday, 9.00AM to 10.00PM
Location :Gaya Fusion of Senses
Jl. Raya Sayan, Ubud
Tel: 979252
Pablo Gentile is a New York artist who has spent over twenty years traveling throughout Asia to places like China, India, Nepal, Borneo, New Guinea and Sumatra. He finally settled in Bali, where he still works today. His first journey was to Japan to study Brush Painting and Martial Arts but later trips took him through many indigenous cultures where he met shamans, priests, magicians, lamas, witch-doctors and artists. These experiences burned deeply into his psyche, entering esoteric states of consciousness, and later to emerge of their own freewill. His paintings contain fragments of imagery from these external and internal voyages, and when talking about his art Gentile states: “In my works can be found the residue of actual experiences. Captured impressions that could not be let go. The real action is getting it out. A bit like an attempt at remembering a dream before it slips away”.
To create these dreamlike paintings Gentile first builds up a subtle background of red, orange, yellow, mauve and green daubs onto which are collaged images from his conscious and sub-conscious voyages. Real images such as Tigers, Fish, Flowers, Butterflies and Birds are mixed in with unreal images from the vast lexicon of Asian Mythology such as Dragons, Gods and Demons. Placed side by side like fragments of memories suggestive of a snap-shot of past journeys, these images appear almost as a visual journal or as a postcard from a personal vision of heaven or hell. These spiritually inspiring paintings speak about the solitary journey of the soul, the dangers of earthly temptations and the constant renewing cycle of Life and Death.
As an artist Gentile’s medium can be “anything that speaks” to him. For a project he could select from oil paints, crayons, spray paint, stone, metal, wood, bones or computer graphics, so it was with much surprise and delight that I found that Gentile has included in his exhibition a large steel sculpture. You don’t see much major sculpture in art galleries these days. The costs of production are too exorbitant and the work is usually relegated to corporate or private sponsorship. Sculpture has also been generally superseded by the inanities of installation and multi-media presentations. Pablo Gentile’s sculptural offering for this show is the highlight of his exhibition.
Entitled “Naga” (Mythological Dragon) this elegant, modernist piece of sculpture simplifies the symbolic images in the exhibition into a daring statement of triangles, rectangles and semi-circles that suggests the inherent mysticism of the Naga as opposed to its visual representation. The sculpture boldly commands its space, and the triangles in the work suggest a movement that could possibly refer to the dragon’s wings or to a spiritual progression. The upward thrust of the rectangles, and their surmounting semi-circles, also speak of an inscrutable, iconic ideology. Much of the elusive mysteries suggested in Pablo Gentile’s paintings are solidified in steel in this breathtaking piece of work. “The Alchemy of Asia” exhibition, currently on display at the Gaya Gallery, is indeed a remarkable show.
