亚历山大·弗戈
Alessandro Fogo
圣显
Hierophany
展览时间：2023年11月4日至12月23日
周二至周六 | 10:00–18:00
开幕时间：2023年11月4日，星期六，下午4至7时
Duration: November 4–December 23, 2023
Tuesday–Saturday | 10:00–18:00
Opening: Saturday, November 4, 4–7 PM
上海市黄浦区云南南路261号6楼
6F, 261 S. Yunnan Rd., Huangpu Dist., Shanghai
关于展览
About the Exhibition
Gallery Vacancy荣幸地宣布于2023年11月4日至12月23日展出亚历山大·弗戈于画廊的首次个展“圣显”。展览名称“圣显”来源于比较宗教哲学家米尔恰·伊利亚德（Mircea Eliade）提出的概念，用以描述“神圣”在世俗世界中的表现形式。通过一系列最新的油画创作，弗戈进一步探究了神话这一题材：将神话性的思维与表达方式依托于现实物件，为神话中蕴含的“崇高性”和“灵韵”赋予当代性的解读。
亚历山大·弗戈
斯芬克斯，2023
布面油画
45 × 60 公分（17 3/4 × 23 5/8 英寸）
Alesssandro Fogo
Sphinx, 2023
Oil on linen
45 × 60 cm (17 3/4 × 23 5/8 in)
从历史的角度来看，神话曾是前科学时代用以解释自然事物与现象的方式。弗戈的绘画实践探索了神话的这一历史功能，意在解析其对当代生活的启示性。他汲取了历史素材中的神话传说和现代生活中的平凡物件，将两者并置于戏剧性的场景之中，使一切虚实难分。借助取材自神话典故的诗意标题，艺术家试图在他的绘画中捕捉对于“神圣”的顿悟。弗戈在作品中重新诠释的神话及思考方式，为观者引介了一种认识现代生活的全新视角。
艺术家在此次作品中引入了一系列神话人物形象，例如狮身人面兽斯芬克斯与众多古典女神；他将这些角色置入与当代生活经验相呼应的场景之中。在《流浪的斯芬克斯》（2023）与《斯芬克斯》（2023）中，弗戈如题描绘了大家熟知的人面兽身的神话生物：它或匿于树后，或在画面的幻觉景观中伪装自己，以避免观者识别出其营造的假象。这些图像大多被笼罩在夜色般的幽暗色调之中，譬如深邃的翡翠绿、赭石黄、以及梦幻的蓝紫色。弗戈的人物角色往往具有流动且不定的身份指向，介于一个微妙的中间地带，既非男也非女，既非人也非兽。此外，弗戈始终以一种细腻谨慎的方式留存他作品表面的纹理。在经过颜料的多次渲染后，画面仍然呈现出鲜明的笔触及哑光柔焦的质感。他的作品有一种贴近生活内核的忧郁气质，隐约展现出个体应对生存困惑时显露的柔软和自觉。
亚历山大·弗戈
流浪的斯芬克斯，2023
布面油画
155 × 122 公分（61 × 48 英寸）
Alesssandro Fogo
No place for sphinxes in the middle of the ocean, 2023
Oil on linen
155 x 122 cm (61 x 48 in)
弗戈对神话的探究进一步体现于他对“圣母”这一宗教人物的描绘。作为艺术家创作中反复涉及的主题，圣母的人物形象常常以暗调的大地色出现，隐喻的是物质世界的起源；这种诠释方式与神学及日常生活中广泛出现的纯洁无瑕的圣母形象形成了强烈的反差。据学者考证，非洲、中东和古希腊罗马的神话中皆存在深色皮肤的女神形象，这些历史参考汇集成为弗戈作品中深肤色圣母的原型。褪去不同地区神话中的名称代号，脱离掉各自的文化语境，她们共通的本质是作为女性的神尊，是给予四季与万物生命的母亲象征。艺术家在《黑色圣母像》（2023）中以肖像的方式展现玛丽亚，而在《 传说伊始（牡蛎传）》（2023）和《神谕与错祭》（2023）中则以更抽象的形式处理：女神或化作牡蛎腹中的一个无身头像，或成为昏暗走廊里隐现的神像。对弗戈来说，深肤色的圣母形象在他的艺术实践中占据着核心地位，这不仅反映了他对意大利文化中无所不在的圣母形象的反思，也显示了他试图将边缘化的文化形象重新引入到大众视野中的尝试。
展览中的作品以神话的形式诉说，在理性与非理性、现实与想象、神圣与世俗之间相互渗透；将想象归于物质，使神圣显于日常，最重要的是，将情感注入我们的思想。至此，超越现实的不可言喻的维度浮现于画布之上——宛若 “圣显”。
亚历山大·弗戈
黑色圣母像，2023
布面油画
50 x 40 公分（19 3/4 × 15 3/4 英寸）
Alessandro Fogo
Black Madonna, 2023
Oil on linen
50 x 40 cm (19 3/4 × 15 3/4 in)
Gallery Vacancy is pleased to announce Alessandro Fogo’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Hierophany, on view from November 4 to December 23, 2023. Proposed by Mircea Eliade, a philosopher of comparative religion, the term “hierophany” addresses the manifestation of the sacred. Through a new series of allusive oil paintings, Fogo continues his interest in the mythical vision of things and offers his contemporary apprehension of the “revered” and the “aura”.
亚历山大·弗戈
传说伊始（牡蛎传），2023
布面油画
60 × 80 公分（23 5/8 × 31 1/2 英寸）
Alessandro Fogo
Birth of the myth (Oyster), 2023
Oil on linen
60 × 80 cm (23 5/8 × 31 1/2 in)
In this exhibition, the artist introduces mythical characters, such as sphinx and ancient goddesses, within familiar settings to our contemporary experiences. In No sphinxes in the ocean (2023) and Sphinx (2023), Fogo depicts the mythic creature, known to many for its human face and animal body, either hiding behind a tree or camouflaging itself in the painting’s hallucinative landscape to evade one’s recognition of its human impersonations. The imageries are mostly bathed in a nocturnal aesthetics, imbued with dark, sombre tones of jade green, ochre and purplish-blue. His characters are full of morphing identities, caught in zones of androgyny, between the man and woman, and the anthropomorphism of human and beast. Additionally, Fogo is always careful in preserving the material surface of his paintings. Despite his concentrated layering in oil, the paintings remain porous with a dilated, matted focus. They transcribe a melancholic familiarity close to the heart of life, revealing an individual’s soft, self-conscious manner of coping with existential bafflement.
亚历山大·弗戈
神谕与错祭，2023
布面油画
95 × 75 公分（37 3/8 × 29 1/2 英寸）
Alessandro Fogo
Wrong offer to the oracle, 2023
Oil on linen
95 × 75 cm (37 3/8 × 29 1/2 in)
Fogo further channels this mythical investigation to his depiction of the religious figure madonna. As a recurring subject matter in his practice, the madonna figure is always depicted with nightly shade in earthly tones that recall the ancient colour of regeneration. Such is evident in Black Madonna (2023), posed as an alternative to the white madonna commonly portrayed in mainstream theology. The dark mother is a beholder of many names and splintered identities of other primordial goddesses from African, Middle Eastern, and Graeco-Roman origins. Nevertheless, names are simply agents, for their true identity, which escapes the grasp of language, remains as one: the universal figure of female divinity, nurturer of all life on earth, and all seasons of life. Besides the eponymous portrait, the artist also portrays madonna’s subtle appearance in other still lifes: Birth of the myth (oyster) (2023) as a disembodied head in the belly of an oyster, and Wrong offer to the oracle (2023) as an obscure oracle in the dark corridors of a venerated site. For Fogo, the centrality of the madonna's presence in his themed exhibition comes not only as a quiet reflection to its integral presence in his home country Italy, but also as a metaphor that recovers the suppressed cultures into our presence.
The exhibited works interpenetrate between the rationale and the irrational, the real and the imaginal, the sacred and the profane. The exhibition speaks to us mythically, while giving back the imaginal to the material, the sacred to the mundane, and most importantly, feelings back to our thoughts. Here begins a saturated manifestation of ineffable dimensions beyond one factual reality⏤a hierophany.
关于艺术家
V A C A N C Y
周二–周六
Tuesday to Saturday | 10:00–18:00
200021 上海市黄浦区云南南路261号6楼
6F, No.261 S. Yunnan Rd., Shanghai 200021
+86-(0)21-62411239
info@galleryvacancy.com
www.galleryvacancy.com
