Contemporary sacred
On contemporary art and the sacred
“I am a militant artist, free from academic and commercial influences and constraints by training and character. In the studio I do what I meet, regardless of anyone's expectations. It would seem a contradiction that I was enthusiastic about when I was given the opportunity to carry out the first, extensive intervention in a church, an area that is often imagined as a place of artistic limitation. Instead, the challenge of the sacred place sums up everything that art and poetry are the essential elements. The comparison with the liturgical-symbolic path is not binding but liberating. It stimulates me to merge formal rigor with the constant flow of energy that characterizes my making art, an intellectual challenge transformed into pulsating matter through forms that inevitably establish a constantly unstoppable dynamism.
Take up the challenge of history and contemporaneity that questions the sacred contemporary and combine it with that of one's own identity, of the vision that must also be inspiring for others, from the faithful individual to the community to the entire city. Few things are as fertile as viscerally confronting a sacred place and attempting the process of symbolic embodiment of a vision. Sacred is the very root of poetry and thought. (...) "
Raul Gabriel
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