This document provides information about an art exhibition titled "Sinopie" by Italian-Argentinian artist Raul Gabriel. The exhibition was curated by Paolo Biscottini and took place from October 11th to November 23rd, 2014 in the Sala Lucio Fontana at the MUDI art museum in Milan. The exhibition featured a series of wood panel paintings by Raul Gabriel titled "Via Crucis #2" that depict the Stations of the Cross through minimal markings and abstraction. The curator's essay discusses Gabriel's focus on image, matter, light and abstraction to convey narrative elements and spiritual themes.

1. Raul Gabriel
Sinopie
a cura di Paolo Biscottini
Sala Lucio Fontana MUDI Milano

2. Raul Gabriel
Sinopie
11 ottobre - 23 novembre 2014
a cura di
Paolo Biscottini
Coordinamento scientifico
Cinzia Picozzi
Traduzione
Tessa Marzotto
Segreteria della mostra
Giancarla Ischio
Chiara Fabbri
Coordinamento tecnico
Stefano Fais
Allestimento
A7 design
Media digitali, Ufficio stampa
Maria Elena Colombo

3. Like Sinopias
Paolo Biscottini
Raul Gabriel’s artistic activity clearly brings to the fore two fundamental issues: the issue of
image and that of matter.
While investigating his pictorial works, as well as the digital ones, one cannot but perceive a
narrative commitment, which is cantilevered between undoubted figural needs and, on the
other hand, spatial aspirations deprived of iconic suggestions.
In this regard, light has an essential value. Through light, or through its absence, between
blinding brightness and total darkness (a sacred metaphor of the existential path), the artist
lingers almost in contemplation: the mind intuits what the eye cannot see, things are perceived
through thinking and then placed in the spiritual realm. This latter has always determined
Raul Gabriel’s artistic research.
At times, this research challenges the very material persistence, dense and lumpy, in which
elements of narration may be grasped, despite its undeniably abstract nature. The lumpy
forms and the few figural elements have no relation whatsoever with the natural world.
Abstract paths of memory, inexistent places, far from any visual syntax, appear instead as
the wandering within one’s own consciousness, as an internal excavation where the lumps of
existence coagulate, together with the aspiration to reach the pure spiritual dimension.
The meaning of any excavating is also taking out the surplus of material, or light, or darkness,
which prevent the complete vision of the intuited image. This is what happens in the Via Crucis
(Stations of the Cross), whose title, Sinopias, precisely indicates the preference for what is left
when everything has been removed. Everything means colour, bituminous black, plaster and
glue white, everything is as teared off, until only the un-erasable signs of the narration are
left clearly visible. Sinopias. Memories released from the accessories and additional elements
hindering their obviousness and very spiritual substance.
Raul Gabriel has long meditated on the “White” Stations of the Cross by Lucio Fontana, and
his work results from this meditation, as well as from the full awareness that it is not possible,
for various reasons and mainly due to historic contingency, to start a new research from that
point. However, he could not avoid taking into account the radical and essential nature of
that gesture, hanging in the balance between the matter still full of figural echoes and the
aspiration to total white, which is already spatial concept.
From the standpoint of this memory and of this contemplation, Sinopias by Raul Gabriel
tells his painful story, from the first station to the last. Very few signs trace, as on the stave,
the notes of an adagio or a crescendo. Painting acquires resonance and resonance defines the
space within which Christ shall reach the Cross.
Come sinopie
Paolo Biscottini
Il percorso artistico di Raul Gabriel pone con evidenza due questioni fondamentali:
quella dell’immagine e quella della materia.
Analizzando tanto le sue opere pittoriche, quanto quelle digitali, non si può non cogliere
un’esigenza narrativa, che appare come sospesa fra indubbie necessità figurali e, al
contrario, aspirazioni spaziali prive di suggestioni iconiche.
La luce in questo senso ha valore essenziale. In essa, o in assenza di essa, fra un accecante
chiarore e un’oscurità totale (metafora sacrale del percorso esistenziale), l’artista sosta,
quasi in contemplazione: la mente intuisce cose che l’occhio non vede, le avverte col
pensiero e le colloca nella dimensione spirituale, che da sempre costituisce l’ambito della
ricerca artistica di Raul Gabriel.
Talora questa ricerca pare sfidare la stessa insistenza materiale, densa e grumosa, in cui
si possono cogliere elementi di una narrazione che, però, non possiamo che riconoscere
come astratta. Le stesse forme grumose e i pochi elementi figurali non hanno rapporto
alcuno con il mondo naturale . Astratti percorsi della memoria, luoghi inesistenti,
estranei ad ogni sintassi visiva, sembrano piuttosto un vagabondaggio all’interno della
propria coscienza, uno scavo interiore in cui si addensano i grumi dell’esistenza e della sua
aspirazione a raggiungerne la pura dimensione spirituale.
Scavare significa anche togliere quel sovrappiù di materia, o di luce, o di buio che
impediscono la visione completa dell’immagine intuita. E’ quanto avviene in questa Via
Crucis il cui titolo Sinopie sta appunto ad indicare la scelta per ciò che resta quando si è
tolto tutto. Tutto significa colore, nero bituminoso, bianco gessoso e colloso, tutto viene
come strappato, finché restano evidenti solo i segni incancellabili della narrazione. Sinopie.
Memorie liberate da quanto di accessorio e aggiuntivo ne impediva l’evidenza e la stessa
sostanza spirituale.
Raul Gabriel ha meditato a lungo sulla Via Crucis Bianca di Lucio Fontana e la sua opera
nasce da questa meditazione, ma anche dalla consapevolezza di non potere, per ragioni
molteplici e soprattutto epocali, muovere la sua ricerca da lì, ma nel contempo non poteva
non tener conto della radicalità e dell’essenzialità di quel gesto in bilico fra una materia
ancora carica di echi figurali e l’aspirazione ad un bianco totale, già concetto spaziale.
Da questa memoria e da questa contemplazione le Sinopie di Raul Gabriel raccontano la
sua storia dolorosa, dalla prima stazione all’ultima. Pochissimi segni tracciano, come su
un pentagramma, le note di un adagio o di un crescendo. La pittura acquista sonorità e la
sonorità definisce lo spazio entro cui la storia di Cristo raggiungerà la Croce.

4. Momentidell’allestimentonellasalaLucioFontana

5. Raul Gabriel is italian-argentinian artist, born in Buenos Aires suburbs in 1966. After a
period dedicated to experimentation in music, and a long journey in Santafe de Bogota,
at the end of 1999 visual became his focus bringin him in Milan, then in London gettin in
few years many shows in both public and private galleries and outlining a path that starts
from body, better sayin the biological identity of reality, and his mutational processes
interpreted in the different aesthetical structures and artistic forms.
Raul Gabriel some shows
PalazzodelleStellineinMilanin2000,inPeriscopio,publicshowspottingthemostinterestingartisticindividuals
in Milan and northern Italy, the solo show at the Mudima foundation in 2003 (Milan), the Quadriennale of
Rome 2003‐-2005, the installation in Battersea Park (Chelsea London), The project room in Miart with a main
gallery in Milan, the solo show at Broadbent Gallery London in 2006, with a focus on hybridation of media,
the video sound performance at the Oberdan Space in Milan (genetically modified trafficlights concert) in 2006,
the solo show in Rome in 2007 at the Pino Casagrande studio gallery, the solo show “Urban Trash” same year
at the Grossetti Contemporary Art Gallery in Milan, the shows and fairs in Berlin and Miami in 2008‐-2009,
the solo show “Colournoncolour” at the Armory Contemporary Art Gallery in Perugia in 2008, the multiple
installation at the opening of Wunderkammern Foundation in Rome end of 2008, and the outstanding video
installation at the two worlds international festival in Spoleto in 2009. Follows these shows the project that took
origin from Gabriel’s Berlin experience with the video “Bak2Berlin” shown at the Fortezza da Basso in Florence
and subject, in its developments, of a new installation and show at the Bologna Art fair in 2010 and then at
the Armory Contemporary Art Gallery in Perugia, titled “Bak2Bike”. There takes origin the “bike removable
path” on show at the Carandente Museum of visual art of Palazzo Collicola in Spoleto until january 2011, and
a room dedicated to the “forms reflections” coming from the Berlin bike project as well. These experiences open
to Raul themes relatin’ to “space” and architecture and in fact in september 2010 Raul Gabriel gets a prize at
the Architecture Department of the Sapienza University in Rome for his project “Silkocoons”, free interpretation
of the Silk Road Map, with a show at the World Expo in Shangai 2010. In october 2010, an event at the Paolo
VI Museum of Contemporary Art is dedicated to the artistic project of Raul Gabriel in a sacred space of the
late 50’s. In 2011 The solo shows in Perugia CUBE at the international architecture festival, and the video
installation O‐-One in Spoleto during the 2011 Two worlds Festival. November 2011 the video installation at
Artmbassy contemporary in Berlin centre. February 2012 video installation Auditorium, Rome. March 2012
“Transformations” London. June 2012 the show TOPOS-TOMIE at the Umbrian Foundation of Architecture.
February 2013 international group show “Lumen Ray” at Jerome Zodo Contemporary Milan, December 2013
w0rm$ at The Format contemprary culture gallery in Milan, December 2013 One to One Public Contemporary
art center Pavia. September 2014 solo show within collaboration of two museums in Brescia, october 2014 solo
project in Milan: Virtual Apraxia at THE FORMAT CONTEMPORARY gallery. October-November 2014,
Sinopiae, Raul Gabriel meets Lucio Fontana, Lucio Fontana’s room MUDI Milan.
Sinopie

6. ViaCrucis#2_StazioneI,Sentence_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014
ViaCrucis#2_StazioneII,Light_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014

7. ViaCrucis#2_StazioneIII,First_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014
ViaCrucis#2_StazioneIV,She_graphiteonwood,50x30_2014

8. ViaCrucis#2_StazioneV,Share_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014
ViaCrucis#2_StazioneVI,Touch_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014

9. ViaCrucis#2_StazioneVII,Second_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014
ViaCrucis#2_StazioneVIII,Distance_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014

10. ViaCrucis#2_StazioneIX,Third_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014
ViaCrucis#2_StazioneX,Purify_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014

11. ViaCrucis#2_StazioneXI,Gotthere_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014
ViaCrucis#2_StazioneXII,Factusest_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014

12. ViaCrucis#2_StazioneXIII,Down_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014
ViaCrucis#2_StazioneXIV,Rest_bitumen,graphiteonwood,50x30_2014

13. Momentidell’allestimentonellasalaLucioFontana

14. Progetto grafico
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