"Iconae Vitae... Iconae Christi” 2004
Solo exhibition - Osterio Magno - Cefalù/Palermo (Italy)
Luca Pantina sums up the recent years of his growing artistic maturity through a journey that wants to provoke and not impose emotion: he thinks that the meaning of what happens depends on the diverse perspectives of the one who observes or lives through the phenomenon; not his own perspectives, but rather the essence of the synthesis of the emotions in the mind of all moves Luca's search towards provocative representations of the natural instincts...Iconae Vitae, Iconae Christi is his itinerary, a synthesis of a hundred, a thousand ways crossed by Man (the forgotten Palermo; the dramatic image of Africa; the force of the instinct, with reference to flamenco): what summarises the concept of anthrópou drama is the cross of Christ, the "sign" of humanity’s rejection of living life according to its nature, better and more truthful, where to be crucified is the most noble example of love for humanity.In Luca Pantina's intimate essence, there is a rejection of affirming and a silent desire of inquiring into the meaning of life: is the world that we are experiencing the world that we want? Maybe we have lost our natural identity, and have simply donned the mask that most attracts us (Masks and Sicilian Masks), reducing the body to small-minded materiality?Hostile to any type of disguise, Luca divides after sua sponte the essence of the mind, of the materiality of the body, from himself, to squeeze the difficult enigma from today’s society with the signs and writings that run through his work, that repeat themselves without meaning, but that create meaning... They recall the new languages that surround us, immaterial signs, only decipherable by the few, with the material fragility, spread today through the human condition.He creates, then, a harmony that bequeaths diverse artistic languages, an ability to enter the furrows of History without burdening himself for that sake with ideologies, making Man reflect and open himself to the world, to the naturalness of the relations.Luca Pantina sees, in this respect, an emblematic Africa, an instrument of human reconciliation with its roots in Nature and its harmony of colors, languages, essential values that provoke the history through which we experience globality, provoking passion, remorse... and emotion that is also essential and natural.
Antonio Franco
Historian and prof. of classical languages
