Casadei
If the distinctive feature of Beppe Sabatino (Palermo 1961, lives between Milan and Fano) are the fish fleeing from the sea which has become inhospitable, in the exhibition at the Albani Gallery in Urbino the fish, which the artist had called “refugees”, emerge from the canvas in three-dimensionality and dialogue with dry branches, with rootless shrubs, always covered in gold.
To reflect, once again, on the identity of a present poised between the harmony of Nature and the looming threat. And it is the reference to Nature, as a dimension that embraces all things, the common thread of the exhibition “Gold and tar”, with the critical intervention of Luca Cesari, where the human presence is an evocation of history, beauty, culture and, together , of a transversal decline. An effective exhibition corpus that is based on the dualism between beauty and destruction, life and death, complexity and synthesis between memory and future and becomes a crossing, a measure between positive and negative. Swing between light and dark like the color of the large installation canvases that Sabatino defines as tar attributable to the theme of pollution. They are stratifications, monochromatic tables in the manner of Rotnko, where sometimes a grid appears as an (in)visible cage, a color that has an autonomous personality and becomes an essential foundation of the work. When it is the branches and golden fish that provide a second level of reading, that reveal a possible re-birth underlined by the beauty, nobility and symbolic strength of gold, a symbolism present in all ancient cultures.
And there are golden tracks, one of gravel hosts the only shrub with green leaves on the entire route, another is blue to evoke the sea, and the theme of water as a symbol of life also returns through the word water written in gold, repeated like a mantra on the dark canvas. Elsewhere there is a golden ladder on which two golden fish rest, the excellence of an expressive oxymoron. Each time like tracks of life in a linear time, like a character that refers to the flow of all things, to the journey of existence in a parallelism between anxiety and calmness, impetus and acceptance, denunciation of a complex present and the hope of preserving and re-discovering the beauty of a primordial Nature. Elegant, harmonious works, imbued with pregnant expressiveness and intellectual depth between figuration, conceptuality and abstraction. Surprise, wonder of an art that speaks to man about man, reflection, obsessive research, a stylistic diary begun years ago which is gradually enriched and nourished by new suggestions.
There is a deep spiritual bond that binds the artist to his works and a sort of ironic doing and satisfaction with the result obtained. The meaning remains, the fascination of a language of art that preserves something unfathomable, unattainable that has the flavor of mystery, produces estrangement. Which becomes a warning. Beppe Sabatino, who has exhibitions in Milan, Brussels, Helsinki, Lisbon and Beijing, tries to do it, manages to do it with depth and lightness to make us “powerfully love the world” as Mariangela Gualtieri would say.
Until June 25, 2024
from Wednesday to Sunday
opening times: 10.30/12.30
and 4.30pm/7.30pm
