Narayana: Rabarama
Past exhibition
Overview
In collaboration with
Sponsored by
Curated by SimonBart Gallery
SimonBart Gallery _ Via Aga Khan 1 - Promenade du Port, Porto Cervo
Opening event: 11th August 2016 – 19:30
Opening hours:
Monday - Sunday: 10:00 - 13:00; 18:00 - 00:00
Installation Views
Events
Press release
After the success of Blend - Accardi Constantine, opening exhibition of the season 2016, SimonBart Gallery of Porto Cervo continues the programme of events with Narayana. The vernissage is focused on the latest artworks of the painter and sculptor Rabarama, which are dedicated to an ancient theme of philosophical and religious tradition: water, as primordial element and origin of existence.
The exhibition will be presented, like the opening vernissage Blend, both in the SimonBart Gallery and in the exclusive Rolls-Royce Summer Studio.
Water, as origin and metaphor of human life, has represented a topic theme in too many different cultures and ages. Myths and symbologies which followed through human evolution from the beginning, have always represented water in a sacred dimension, in all the different cultures.
According to a Hindu principle, water is the source of all the things and the origin of existence. Indeed, in the Hindu religion water has always been a theme of crucial importance. In Hindu ritual and mythology, to which Rabarama’s last artworks are inspired, water and his sacredness are one of the main recurring concepts, symbol of cosmogony tout court. “Nārāyana”, literally “inhabitant of waters”, is in the Hindu pantheon the primordial man, origin of all the things, , the only source of life. Water, indeed, as source of life, eternity, strength.
The same strength showed by Rabarama’s last works, characterized by brave poses and twisted gestures, which recall typical themes of Hindu awareness, reinterpreted with an original artistic language. This comes to a marked dynamism; the artist reaches this results after a suffered and troubled artistic path.
In her latest artworks, Rabarama overtakes the deterministic idea of cosmos and the understating of man as “biological computer”, unable to dominate his destiny, in order to come to purely pondering results, inspired to an overflowing vitality. Human figures, with “tattooed” skin, covered by tribal signes which are references to ancient cultures, assume agitated poses, as in the act of setting free from their shell, in which they are prisoners.
Moving from the Hindu Philosophy Rabarama expresses, with an artistic language characterized by chromatic exuberance and a marked dynamism of gesture, the contemporary human condition, grasping her tensions and anxiety. A language strongly dramatic, expressionist, “aggressive both to the spectator and the creator”, as the director of the Museum of Art di Boca Raton in Miami, George S. Bolge, has said; on the other side, a language strongly optimistic, of overflowing energy and extraordinary vitalism.
In Narayana Rabarama, through the suffered research on the existential condition of contemporary man, gives voice to his untamable, eternal desire of hope and freedom.
