Italian artist Agostino Arrivabene paints an iconographic universe that exists somewhere at the division between the real world from the spiritual realm. Previously featured here on our blog, his works include landscapes, portraits, and large paintings allegorical and apocalyptic in nature. Subjects of his paintings often appear as if from another time and place, celestial bodies and nudes emerging from the earth that recall the figures of those who influence him, particularly Gustave Moreau and Odd Nerdrum. Arrivabene describes his personal world as one that is eclectic and occult, where his artistic language changes depending on his life experience. His upcoming solo exhibition at Cara Gallery in New York, “Hierogamy”, delves into mythological themes and ideas about personal intimacy, change, and time.
Hierogamy refers to a sacred ritual that plays out a marriage between a god and a goddess, portrayed in Arrivabene’s images of hermaphrodites, “an entity that encompasses everything”, and the starry bodies of a mane and woman in a passionate embrace. He likens their world to a “golden cloud”, a recurring motif in his work and a place consisting of surrealistic landscapes like rocky and dry, desert wastelands, where death has a place in the natural cycle of life next to gods’ happy love making. The exhibition will present two paintings carried out between 2014 and 2016, “Ea -Exit” and “The Dream of Asclepius”, and display works created in varying techniques, oil on canvas or wood, cracked oil on brass, and painting on stone.
Agostino Arrivabene’s “Hierogamy” will be on view at Cara Gallery in New York from March 4th through April 16th, 2016.
