BERLIN.- KÖNIG GALERIE presents MON PÈRE, Bosco Sodi’s third exhibition with the gallery and his first in one of its Berlin locations. The title, which translates to “my father” in French, reflects Sodi’s ongoing exploration of materiality and spirituality. In this homage to his father, Sodi has created a meditative installation featuring 10 new mixed–media canvases surrounding a century-old olive tree placed at the center of the former church. Specially conceived for the nave of St. Agnes, the exhibition resonates deeply with the spiritual atmosphere and legacy of the building, offering a captivating interplay of colors, textures, and space.

The olive tree slowly takes its place in the landscape, tearing up barren soil, holding tight to its leaves in the face of the wind; always casting shade, moving forward, slowly filling its fruit with oil, forever reconciled to the chaos of the elements, finding its place in the earth. The stone and wood embedded into the green paintings mirror the olive tree, carving up the barren matter of the canvas, while at the same time being cradled by it. The wood and stone become the inhabitants of the natural scape of the painting, becoming as they exist in harmony with its matter. Each piece of wood reflects the attitude of the olive tree; a reconciliation with the chaos of the compositions.

The cycle of Sodi’s work is one which embraces the accidents of the process of creation, miming the turmoil of the natural forces that the olive tree itself undergoes. The meditative sequence in which he renders his works, the energy that drew him to each of the fragments embedded in the mixed–media canvases, the cracks that develop by the temperament of paint, these are like the ever–changing elements of nature. The fragments then take their place alongside the chaos and exist harmoniously. If the cherry blossom reflects the beauty of impermanence in the aesthetic philosophy of Wabi-Sabi, the olive tree reflects Wabi–Sabi’s embrace of how it is that things just are, indifferently producing its oil. In that way, the paintings are indicative of the attitude of nature, always in the process of becoming as it encounters disorder and randomness.

To Noah, the olive branch was a symbol of peace, a new covenant with the divine and with the torrential natural world, a rebirth in the form of a new relationship, marked by the end of a trial. This narrative gives the olive tree as well as the paintings a certain resonance within the space of the former church. The green works, marked by their embedded wooden and stone pieces, interact with St. Agnes and help to transform it by creating an interactive relationship – a dialogue between the canvases, the church, and the olive tree. In the capacious confines of the former nave, the olive tree marks the center, alters it, and is in turn altered by the painting. The works operate around the simultaneous existence of life and rebirth while serving as a symbol of peace, activating those living elements that are contained within themselves. Surrounded by art, the olive tree ceases to be just a tree, it acquires new aesthetic significance.

The emptiness and graceful rigidity of the vast space of the former nave are changed by the paintings, which bring substance, transforming the expanse into a place of contemplation. There, one can listen as the wooden pieces take root in the matter, seemingly the cause of the cracked earth that extends slowly into the work. The shape of the wood guides the eye in such a manner that it seems as if the wood itself had decided how the matter should have taken shape. The powerful green textures cast shadows through the fissures, subduing and defying the imposing light, challenging the bareness of the space with their rich colors and chaotic patterns. The centered or symmetrical placement of the objects on the paintings provides mediational grounding, a point of concentration.

MON PÈRE evokes the father through the gravitas of Bosco Sodi’s works, along with the space, and the tree. The scale of St. Agnes invokes the immensity of the father, the paintings his solemness and dignity, and the tree his longevity and strength, all evoked in the dialogue between the works and their surroundings in meditative contemplation. MON PÈRE is an exhibit about the father, life, rebirth, peace, reconciliation, dignity, and harmony.

© Text by Austen A. Artier