ABSTRACT vs OPTICAL: Jigger Cruz / Marco Mazzucconi / Farhan Siki / Rangga Aputra / Jiahua Qian / Refijon / Tantin Udiantara / Wang Zhongjie
Past exhibition
Press release
It was meant to be physically there, but it won’t.
Forget your best suit, lay down on your sofa, stretch your lazy muscles and raise a glass to contemporary art: this is the first exhibition Primo Marella Gallery launches online instead of inviting you to visit on a cool spring-like Thursday evening. Moral disclaimer: we are gonna use words and talk about things extremely out of sync to what is going on out there.
Abstract vs Optical, a journey started one year ago on some unspoiled Indonesian environment, redirecting myself to Singapore and Philippines, eventually leading me back to the place where I first encountered the most sincere art of the nineties (second disclaimer: the country that follows will cause mixed feelings): China.
Exploring studios.
Visiting independent art spaces.
Walking through alleys.
Debating with old and new friends at old and new cafes.
Tasting traditional food whose flavor reminds you of the last time you had it, suggesting new directions, though.
Nor China nor any country gathered under the acronym S.E.A. has ever expressed a so coherent research in art around the absence of any formal shapes. Even through their darkest times, those lands have never challenged their audience with a so explicit lack of formal reference. Not until now. Therefore, the aim of thisshow is to evidence suchbooming of abstraction inregionswhere this practice hasn’t been the general rule yet.
On one hand, the new generation of artists is quite involved in this kind of painting; on the other hand, many mid-career artists are leaving Figurativism behind.
They are all strongly involved in experimenting new and innovative way of expressing themselves. Questioning their own position in the world, they start from hearth-felt topics, follow unpredictable directions and get to surprising solutions. How difficult it is to understand in a direct manner that a brushstroke truly is the visual consequence of an inner instinct.
Abstract Vs Optical doesn’t want to oppose, rather bring together (finally something very sympathetic with the moment). Bring together ideas, feelings, actions, artists generations.
I was very surprised in my travel last year around Asia about this situation, and probably I am one of the few that had this impression. I also found, at the beginning that this attitude were simple, and so not interesting, in region where there is not a tradition in it. But later I started to analyze better this Phenomena, and I am arrived to consider it an interesting direction of the art of this generation of artist.
And my rule, is, as always, to try to understand what of new is happening in the art world. In these new experimentations or forms of art, I have also seen a side attitude, in the practice of several artists, to do an abstracting-art more in direction of new forms of optical Art, like if this kind of attitude in painting (starting from artists like Vasarely or Tadasky and going through the experiences of several artist of Kinetik art in the past...) has never stopped, and need to have to express it more modernly and widely in this times. Especially with the voices of this extraordinary new artists coming out from Asia.
Installation Views
ABSTRACT vs OPTICAL, Installation view at Primo Marella Gallery, Milan
