"Christusimpuls 2006"
Solo exhibition – San Saverio gallery - ERSU Cultura - Palermo. (Catalogue with texts of Joan Lluís Montané - Luca Pantina - Antonio Franco)
Luca Pantina, the expressiveness of fine arts discourse, the iconography and the spiritual labyrinth of mirrors
Luca Pantina's pictorial work enters the rough terrain of the spiritual essence, tracing a discourse in which the prophets of different religions express their support for the idea of unity in diversity. This means that they are mirrors of the same god and spiritual power, the central element of an energetic, celestial synthesis. All this is on display in Luca's paintings in a geometric exposition of compartmentalised composition, in the sense of going beyond the established limits. A geometric division that speaks to us about the existence of different realities, about different times; but, simultaneously, it is the same time, because there is a coherent attitude that encloses the disposition to promote the curvature of the step of the seconds, allowing us to ascertain the simultaneous existence of the past, present and future. For this reason the artist carries out, in a simple and natural way, a journey through the crystal mirrors of time, in which we see Jesus Christ together with Buddha, Gandhi, Krishna, Mohammed, Moses, Zoroaster, as well as other minor and major prophets. The artist presents a spiritual dynamics full of iconic signs, which seem to be a product of the same vibrations that the messages of these spiritual figures produce. A complex, non-descriptive, expressionist seeker of the essence of spirituality, Luca concentrates on discourses, persons, prophets, human beings blessed by light who carry out an example that is at once vital and sensitive, dynamic and transcendently determined, full of impulse, strong, evident, but simultaneously endowed with mystery, of the doors that open the seals that explain the allegories, metaphors, symbols and keys. There is no tension, nor a feeling of time. Similarly, the concept of space is not raised either, because it goes beyond circumstances in the sense that space is not important, nor is there a need to delimit historically the different phases of the dynamics of the spheres of the prophets’ teachings… Examiner of the spiritual magma, the artist knows that we are all one, that they are all one, that every prophet and man of light is a product of the need to be with oneself. We are all one; from this follows that the geometric delimitation, the vertical line, shows that there is no path, that time does not exist, that it is all the same discourse, part of the magma, in spite of theoretical differences. Consequently the iconographic signs that accompany this series by the Italian artist of the South, nowadays living in Seville (Spain), are a product of the evidence of continuous development. In this order of things, if we carry out a curvilinear revision of existence, it is clear that we need to be constant and coherent; whereas if we look without looking, pondering, observing, not to see anything later on, to be in everything, in nothingness, in the Pleiades and then in silence, we will be conscious of what we are. The big teachers, according to the work of this Sicilian artist, orient us towards the stages of the basic energies. These stages are consistent and dynamic, but simultaneously based on the formulation of a sincere explanation. The artist’s work is warm, made up of colours that resemble the soil and austere nature. At other times the colours are sensual and more strident. Likewise, the colours produce the sensation that the artist is expressing with great harmony the need for the transformation of humanity. They indicate respect, austerity, cleanliness of soul, fight, fasting and meditation. His characters give off light; they are geographically and chronologically located in the land, but without being mediated by time – only if one wants – though they come from another remote celestial nucleus, sent to implant other beliefs in humanity, which is effortlessly changing towards a larger energising of the spirit. Ultimately, the artist’s contribution is the response of humanity itself in reference to the dynamics of everything. Everything is nothing; in nothingness there is emptiness; in spirituality, messages from the prophets but, first of all, we, you, they, all, the whole of humanity in the inner self. There are many worlds but they are inside you.
Joan Lluis Montané
Of the International Association of Art Critics
Christ's Impulse 2006
Christusimpuls (Christ's Impulse) is a term coined by the German artist Joseph Beuys, among the most polemical in the art of the 20th century. Beuys wanted to define a force of heat and universal love, a permanent and growing presence that every person must find in their interior dialogue with Christ, fighting against society’s ruling materialism by means of a return to spirituality. Beuys’ religious thought looks, therefore, for a form of personal discovery of the spiritual. The key aspects of this approach could transcend any religion, a kind of pan-spiritualism, but Beuys stays solidly joined to the Christian model. Rather than speaking about God as a general religious concept, he speaks of Christ. Even though he was interested in Oriental philosophies, and managed to meet the Dalai Lama, his model is western and Christian. In his work there are no explicit allusions to other religions. There are almost no references to Judaism, nor to the Holocaust, which does not stop being surprising since Beuys only dares to tackle it on some rare occasion. Many of these topics have become part of my painting, but I have always preferred the aspects of cultural synthesis, of the deeply human and, at the same time, cosmic dialogue that is realised by that mysterious thread of vital Energy, capable of uniting the Universe. A point of synthesis has been the individual exhibition "Iconae vitae … Iconae Christi" that I presented in 2004 at Cefalù’s Osterio Magno (Palermo), where Christ crucified, seen from the back, appears and disappears, incessantly: an unusual point of view, an invitation to change. I have wanted to put Jesus Christ at the centre of the human theme of pain, as an expression of the man who sublimates his Nature in offering it to the Other but is forced to suffer, victim of the Other that rejects Love. When I was little I collected animals and I have always had my own little zoo, just as Joseph Beuys. In the series “Current Bodies", which I have presented in Seville, the abiding topic was the concept of reincarnation; in the piece From Joseph Beuys to a hare I have tried to recall the importance that the artist gave to animals: endowed with a spiritual energy and superior to man, where the hare is also a symbol of reincarnation. (Let's not forget that Beuys founded a political party for the animals.) I was not yet born when the German artist shut himself up in a gallery in New York for three days, to live with a coyote. When I was eight years old, Joseph Beuys left this planet; but this is not important now, after having discovered and studied him; it is not because of this that I, at this moment, refer to the German artist. There is in me a personal search for the spiritual where Christ's image plays a part: this is my drug, which allows me to evade a material and provisional world. The series presented here again places Jesus Christ at the centre (a memory of this exists, and my primary school education was Christian); not crucified, but living, the man who personifies Wisdom and who because of that belongs to all faiths and to all cultures. He appears meditating; he lives the message of Peace of the Buddhists, cries at the Wall of the Temple with the Hebrews, he has been represented as the Sun in the ancient religions, he dances to the cosmic rhythm of the Sufis... When Christ puts himself in the centre to dance and share in the music of the Cosmos with the Sufis, the subject is dedicated to the master Franco Battiato: he has always been my personal and professional point of reference, and I have often listened to his musical suggestions in my meditations. As I think might be noted, many aspects of my life and work recall that of Franco Battiato, above all in the spiritual dimension: several times, in the most difficult moments, I have thought strongly that "the clouds cannot annihilate the sun" and I have returned to find hope in Life and confidence in my aims. In addition, I have tried to treasure his wealth of messages, from those at the social level to those more open to the influence of cultures (Africa and Spain), up to his insistent desire to search for the Divine. As in "Iconae vitae … Iconae Christi ", the pictorial technique is industrial varnish on aluminium. Above all, this exhibition wants to be a form of opening, an invitation to find meaning without any type of mediation; the material work matters little; it is a search of new cultural and spiritual acquisitions to fight the spreading mediocrity that surrounds us and often prevails. I wish to give my thanks to all those who have made this event possible, to the visitors, to my friends and also to my enemies, because they are the ones who give me the real force to continue. Thank you!
Luca Pantìna
Luca Pantina’s artistic journey is made up of significant experiences and expressions of his path of existential search, which is founded – in a way that is always increasingly fulfilled – on the binomial engagement et méditation en même temps. His attention, in fact, to the anthropological relapses of the interior reflections, to the social message of spiritual elevation, has become the constant feature of his work in later years: it is as if Luca was managing to reveal that subtle network of connections that unifies the most different spiritualities and interior dynamics of the human dimension, presenting this to a contemporary absent-minded and superficial human being with the purpose of taking time to think of history, of the most intimate roots of our being a humanity on a journey. A determination, then, that the artist seeks with the main goal of experiencing the indispensable path of his own internal search, of the relation with the Other taken on with truth and conviction, of the elevation to diminish the false heights of our Selves. In this exploration there appears, again, the image Christ, the presence of Jesus, or Man, who passes through the centuries and explores the ways of the world, finding humanity waiting and hoping, and the numerable directions of the search for God: it is a strong provocation for the Christian to see Jesus with the symbols of ancient religions and meeting with Buddhists and Jains, who pray according to Zen or the Hare Krishna, crying at the Wall of Jerusalem, dancing with the Sufis or the Dogón people; but the artist knows how to find a deep truth in the message of Christ, that is to say that, He is the Way, the Truth and the Life with which every faith, every thought, the whole of history is called to confront. A provocation where every Christian has to answer by yielding to a confrontation with everything that is different from the Self, with which he searches for the Truth while looking at other perspectives, following other paths. Luca Pantina transfers these messages, the styles of his meditations on the meaning of Life, on to panels of aluminium and varnish; he uses what might look like the most distant and cold material in respect to the deep nature of his thoughts and those natural elements present in other moments of his work, almost being reciprocal pendants: the works’ explosions of colours, the approximations, the tonalities of red, of yellow, of green give vivid colour to the grey bases, forming images of strong suggestion, fruit of an expression that dialectically and constructively confronts postmodern thought. Still there appear, from deep down, those esoteric signs that, in Luca’s painting, allude to the new and fleeting languages that surround us, complex sémata of the investigations of the painter-hermeneut. The disclosed closeness to the musical art of Franco Battiato, a point of reference that we have in common: to believe in a “cosmic dance” that creates a symphony of universal diversity, where painting and music, poetry and philosophy, faith and reason contribute in the same way; it is not only under the artist’s auspices, but a journey, internal or, rather, shared, that wants to reveal itself to those who look with an undistracted eye; a tribute to a patrimony belonging to our culture, not only the desire of a less superficial society. After “Iconae vitae … Iconae Christi”, Luca Pantina again discovers for us a part of himself, of treasured meditations, and still we feel strong sensations that provoke ideas and forward us to our existence, to what once, more than once or perhaps never we have thought to ask or to say to our soul, to ourselves.
Antonio FrancoHistorian and professor of classic languages
