ExhibitionsGabriel Kantor – Incisioni e disegni

28th of february 2016

 

Il Bisonte Gallery, Via San Niccolò 24 / red.
The exhibition will remain open from 3 March to 1 April 2016,
with the following timetable: from Monday to Friday 9 – 13 and 15 – 19
Saturday by appointment, closed on Sunday

… This is precisely what Kantor’s etchings teach, where the techniques – etching, drypoint, mezzotint and so on – mix as if by magic, that is, without obvious effort, with absolute naturalness. The reference to the nature of the engravings thus acquires a deeper value, since the aspiration is that the images present the same organic inevitability that natural formations have. I am reminded of a floor mosaic from a place on the Black Sea, where this exergue is affixed to the personifications of the winds: we work without asking anything. It is precisely Kantor’s compositions that seem to be born without any effort. If you look at them with a lens, you discover hidden worlds instead; like, for example, the thousand eyes inside a thistle. The same organicity is found in deliberately non-figurative compositions, where tones and signs follow each other in musically necessary sequences. Here nothing is accidental, just as the blow that falls on a drum during the performance of a concert cannot be accidental.
In Gabriel Kantor’s work, drawing is not just a preparation for the constructed event that is engraving. It is certainly study and preparation, but it also has an autonomous value. The graphite of the pencil is used by him with the same spirit of research with which he experiments with the acids that attack the plate, the burin that engraves it, the inks and the printing paper. If you could look at one of his volume drawings using a thread counter, you would find very fine and distinct marks on a few square millimeters, as if the tip of the pencil was looking for the minute grains of the paper. At the other extreme, drawings that on the surface could be misunderstood as quick notes, reveal a profound wisdom. They are back on a single reason: Lake Como from the Bellagio peninsula. It is immediately understood that that corner of the landscape has been observed countless times and an equally interminable number of times the artist’s hand has exercised on that theme until reaching the improvisational character of the final drawings. To the safety of the sign and its elegance is added an ambiguity rich in questions between the rabesque on the surface and an indication of inescapable depth. The eye passes incessantly from one hypothesis to another; now enjoying the swing of signs, now looking away until you almost remember the names of the places: Punta di Balbianello, Sasso Gordona … Nothing is unmotivated here …

Carlo Bertelli