Artist : Roberto Coda Zabetta
Genre : Paintings & Sculpture
Period : October 7 till November 7
Everyday, 9.00AM till 10.00PM
Location : Gaya Fusion Art Space
Jl. Raya Sayan, Ubud
Tel: 979252
The problem with a lot of contemporary installation work is
that it is site specifically constructed for museums and art
galleries, and has little application for the private collector.
However, Italian artist Roberto Coda Zabetta wants “the
scale and energy of his paintings to command the space of
the gallery or the museum or the collector’s home, and
be viewed and understood as art”. Zabetta was born in
1975, and he is one of the most interesting artists to emerge
from Italy at the end of the 1990’s. Despite his young
age, he has already earned major acclaim in the European art
circuit in exhibitions such as the MiArt 2003, the 14th Art
Quadrennial in Turin in 2004, and his solo exhibitions in
Rome and Florence. Both again in 2004.
In his current exhibition, ‘Face Cancel’, which
has been purposely created for Bali, Zabetta presents twelve
ceramic human heads and five large format paintings. “These
pieces constitute a single work that lures spectators into
its core. A single installation created specifically for the
500m2 of space at Gaya Fusion Art Space. It is a theatre setting
that invites the public to traverse the scene and interact
with the many visual and physical stimuli brought together
for the occasion”. On entering the installation, the
viewer is literally overwhelmed by the imposing monumental
scale of the paintings.
Zabetta is labeled a Transavantgardist, in-so-much as this
1980’s Italian art movement emerged as a reaction against
Minimal and Conceptual art. The Transavantgarde sought a return
to classical painting with an interest in myths and legends,
recourse to sources in art history with a conscious mixing
of styles, plus an emphasis on the Sign, the Signifier and
the Signified. In his installation, Zabetta has been able
to ingeniously signify two separate messages from his five
large format black and white paintings.
Working from photographs of the faces of anonymous male cancer
victims, Zabetta intensifies “the threshold of confrontational
awareness in relation to the viewer. The demons hidden within
these faces are incited to come forth”. The paintings
recall Francis Bacon’s disturbing images of people who
look tortured and despairing, their mouths screaming in anguish
and grief. Similarly, Zabetta’s haunting images are
of human existence amid extraordinary internal and external
stress and pain. Paintings such as ‘Untitled Face 1
& 2’ depict not only the physical suffering of the
victims, but they also acknowledge the enormous psychological
impact of the disease. The ravages of the disease on the victims’
faces, and the hollow, ghostly, appearance of the eyes, all
suggest something that is distinctly unsettling, discomforting,
and threatening. A lingering sensation that goes beyond reason.
An aura of emptiness. An indication of impending death and
the inevitable journey into the unknown. However, when the
paintings are scrutinized at a short distance, they begin
to lose their original identity as portraits and appear like
something else, namely as abstract expressionist paintings.
You become aware of the paint as a physical part of the painting,
so that the face is not merely a record of the photograph
but is a vehicle of expression. Now, the message is about
the joys of painting, and the quality of paint in itself.
In expressive movements, Zabetta fills his canvases with large
sweeping brushstrokes, wild ecstatic splashes, and sensuous
smears. The paintings become luscious examples of contemporary
expressionistic art, to be enjoyed purely for their decorative
qualities. This is ingenious art, for the horrors of the paintings
are suppressed by the expressiveness of the paint. Zabetta’s
installation is an intriguing artistic ‘trick’,
for, on one level, it works as grandiose ‘gallery’
art, yet, it can simultaneously be read as intimate non-confrontational
art, suitable for any collector’s residence.
Once the viewer has absorbed the impact of Zabetta’s
paintings, the observer’s attention is directed towards
the twelve life-size ceramic heads that comprise the finale
of the installation. Pieces such as ‘Ceramic Head’
transform the physical impact of cancer into ‘plastic’
sculptures. The corruption of the body is expressed through
aggressive pummeling of the clay and the cracked surface of
the ceramic glaze. However, there is an analytical quality
to these sculptural heads. With the advent of Darwinism in
the mid 1800’s, and then again during the Nazi regime
in Germany, scientists and doctors were keen to classify the
human cranium into different categories. The Caucasian, or
Aryan, cranium was considered the ideal. The African and Asian
skulls were placed lower down the scale, and, to the Nazis
in-particular, the Jewish head went beyond the pale. This
was an extremely bigoted and racially biased system of classification
and, of course, was quickly discredited, yet, in Zabetta’s
‘Ceramic Heads’ there does seem to be a system
of classification going on. This classification suggests that
cancer knows no boundaries between race or creed. The methodical,
almost scientific, execution of these works is in stark contrast
to the exuberance of the paintings, which painfully capture
the physical ravages of the disease.
Zabetta’s installation has, at its centre, a theme that
many will find disturbing and upsetting. Yet, this is a dazzling
exhibition full of painterly pleasures and angst. Zabetta’s
installation is a triumph, and not to be missed.
