SODOM AND GOMORRAH a reportage from the lost cities

Alessandro Bavari's exhibition of twelve digital works is currently at the Storehouse, St James's Gate, Dublin. Bavari is one of a new breed of painters that blend the classical and the digital, he has exhibited his work all over the world but never before in Ireland.The images marry a process of digital manipulation, painting, chemical etching and photography. Bavari, a classically trained Italian painter has studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, he came to this work in the early 1990's with a strong grounding in the techniques of oils, watercolours and engraving. Bavari's influences hint at Giotto, Michelangelo and Hieronymus Bosch. Both Italian and Flemish schools of art are part of the inspiration for these incredibly detailed images.

The exhibition Sodom and Gomorrah, is a work in progress, one Bavari feels will never end. For this work in Dublin he has chosen a biblical number of twelve images. These large-scale pieces (2m x 2m approx) will be hung in a numbered circular flow inside of the glass atrium. It is best to approach Sodom and Gomorrah in a manner not unlike 'doing' the Stations of the Cross, when you enter the room follow the pieces until you reach the end of the numbered sequence. The twelve giant images will be hung in the Atrium of the 5th floor at Storehouse, the project will require a team of ab-sailors to hang the work, an event in itself.

The theme of the exhibition is based on the biblical story. Bavari takes us on a visual journey of two damned cities where people happily live in a total absence of morality, devoted to vice and lust, where every kind of sexual perversion is part of normal life. This direction is not taken for its shock value, on the contrary it is handled with subtle ingenuity, letting the eye inform the mind and the mind grapple with a unique yet strangely familiar hybrid of voyeurism.

"All cities were invented; I keep a file on object, a file on animals, one on individuals, one on historical figures and another on mythological heroes. I have a file on the four seasons and one on the five senses; in one I collect pages related to the cities and landscapes of my life and in another imaginary cities, outside of space and time." Italo Calvino (The Invisible Cities, 1972, Einaudi )

 

www.stunned.org