GROUP EXHIBITION

Each of these three artists are very different, both in the language they use in their art and in their very different ages, yet allshare similar preoccupations. None of them are making any political, economic, or social declarations but rather they are unitedin a metaphysical search for meaning both deep within us and beyond us in the unfathomable universe.

The eldest of the three is the artist Riccardo Guarneri. His finely wrought and refined artworks are realised with the simplest ofmaterials; pencils, coloured crayons, rulers, rubbers etc. Essentially no different from those that young children utilise when theytake their first steps into art. The titles are a literal description of the apparent contents of the works. However, the apparentprosaicness of the titles is a very powerful spiritual force. The works exude a sense of tranquillity and peacefulness and are aninvitation for us to reflect on our inner being but also the wider universe beyond our world. Last year, Guarneri suffered a serioushealth problem which, thankfully, he has fully overcome, yet this led to a change in his latest works where there is a palpablesense of things disappearing into pure empty space. However, there is no drama, merely a reinforced sense of gradual peace. Ina very different language, fifty years earlier, the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi created a similar effect in the mind of the viewer.Both artists’ works share an apparent simplicity and purity which invite us to a profound meditation.

Marianna Gioka’s works are, in contrast, extraordinarily complex, full of minute marks made with a bewildering array of pens.One would imagine that an artist working in such minute and painstaking detail would realise only very small works but, in reality,Gioka’s works are large; each being a prolonged labour of love. Before the artist begins with the mark making, she paints abackground of creamy or dark colour depending on the atmosphere she wishes to create with the finished work. This increasesthe composition’s richness. As viewers, we gaze and get lost in this most elaborate of spider webs of marks, the richness of thefinished picture reveals itself gradually as we progressively get lost in this universe so redolent with mystery.

The paintings of the Korean artist Min Woo Nam take us immediately into a metaphysical landscape. The works have a hypnoticquality where the elements of light, darkness and colour are the absolute protagonists. The mystical light which is so fundamentalto Nam’s vision appears not to be a light of this world but something more far-reaching and profound, making our journey aspiritual one into life’s eternal questions. Although the mystery and wonder of light has been a constant exploration over thecenturies, there is a quality to Nam’s painting which feels very original. It’s interesting to compare his paintings to HiroshiSugimoto’s photographic seascapes which, wonderful as they are, can never give us the emotional richness of paint.

All three artists open a window for us to meditate on our own deepest feelings and impulses in the same way that a MarkRothko painting or a work by Pierre Soulages with its unfathomable blackness, result in us embarking on an emotional dialoguewith ourselves about the great metaphysical questions of life. Although, in our contemporary art world, we appear fixated onart as a vehicle to talk about political and social questions of the day, this places a great limitation and barrier of what art cancommunicate. Does a great work have to be about something politically or socially relevant? All three artists in different wayspresent us with a window into infinity: Riccardo Guarneri with his pure, empty space, Marianna Gioka with her extraordinarilycomplex intricate marks which, as we stare within, presents us with a window into infinity and finally Min Woo Nam’s hazydivisions between light and darkness, land and sky or sea and sky. The miracle which great art can trigger within us has surely nolimitations and artists such as Riccardo Guarneri, Marianna Gioka and Min Woo Nam exert in their more distilled and mysteriouslypowerful way other, profound opportunities for reflection-on our lives on this planet.