The truth is by its nature ambiguous – Raul Gabriel says
it is the choice of the observer”. The moving image prompts questions in the viewer
more than certainties, swinging between the concepts of embrace, welcome and challenge.
The focus of Xfiction is the body, “the body as revelation”. That of a man or that of
Christ, depending on the observer.
"... We find in this work the evocative capacity of the mystery typical of ancient icons, obtained through an operation that is on the border between figurative and non-figurative, between formal and iconic that Gabriel creates with the instrument congenial to him of hybridization. Thanks to this artistic practice he aspires to realize a tension and an interpenetration similar to the decisive one that indissolubly entangles flesh and spirit, word and image, sensitive perception and eidetic intuition.
In fact, in this Christian revelation is realized no less than the authentically human experience of existence. The ideological choice for one or the other front risks being fatal for an art that, like the Christian one, does not exist for itself and in the self-referentiality of its own language, but is a word in which the mystery of faith resounds ... This mystery first appears, reveals itself, but the game of revelation is the game of a veil that shows by guarding. This is the secret of its effectiveness. With this veil that is put on and taken off at the same time Gabriel shows that he is able to try his hand.
His work, in this sense, detaches itself, for example, from the narrative tension of video art by Bill Viola or by Wallinger's intellectual research. Raul Gabriel works on the border between the body and the light: a body made of light and a light that becomes a body. In this mysterious reciprocity, the viewer recognizes Christ and finds not only theEcce Homobut also the Risen, which seems to embrace the entire space, the cosmos, all of humanity, generating the evocative power of the image. ... "
International exhibition "He became flesh" Medicean Basilica of San Lorenzo Florence.
Divided into three sections, the exhibition will present the works of some of the biggest names on the international scene: from the series Ex Voto by Nan Goldin to Via Crucis by Adrian Paci, from video installations Via dolorosa by Mark Wallinger and Xfiction by Raul Gabriel to video installations Mimmo Paladino, up to the shrill series dedicated to the post-council churches of the French Fabrice Fouillet and to the severe 'blacks' of the Gothic cathedrals of Gianni Ferrero Merlino.
