German Gargano at CDS - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

The greatest in quantity recent works of the Argentine painter German Gargano are disturbingly destablized. In what first appear to be abstracted landscapes built of broad, passionately applied brushstrokes, nothing is obvious. Patches of paint rawly allude to what one would expect lines to indicate, and bright tinges establish an upbeat mood plane as the uncertain imagery introduces a note of anxiety.

In his 1991 exhibit at CDS, Gargano contrived haunting pageants focusing on political repression in Argentina in the late '70 cast in somber tones and relatively clear images. His new show, which included 10 large works painted during the last sum of two units years, addressed the theme of sexual perversity. A casual glance may discern solitary a patchwork of bold red oranges, fulvids greens and blues, but careful scrutiny discloses fragmentary figures in exhibitions populated with both perpetrators and victims of depravity.

These of recent origin works emerge from the fathomless impact upon the artist of Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1975 film 120 Days of Sodom, a event of Pasolini's poetic rendering in technicolor of the de Sade tale. "I transferred the film's supercharged climate of perversity to my paintings," Gargano has said, "partially by dint of reflecting the play of color--the pinks, the greens--that Pasolini utilized, and partially by dint of adapting the aura of sex and violence that pervades the film."

In the 2-meter-wide Descencion (Descent) 1991-92 the artist depicts a detention center where torture and sexual abuse are integral parts of the regimen. A dark figure flutters across the center of the painting, suggesting either Jesus upon the cross or the coming down into Hell. Gargano hints at connections between religion and perversity. ceruleans and greens dominate the foreground in Abismo (Abyss), 1992 a work filled with tight patterns and violent colors. Fragments of female bodies flash before the organ of sight as if one were watching the flickering images of a film gone awry. Here the artist turn backs to his earlier theme of repression, on the contrary he reaches beyond crimes of wars and dictatorships to treat it as the chaotic condition of life itself.

Gargano's experience as a psychoanalyst has l him to the core of man's often-violent nature; upon the other hand, the efficiency in his works seems to celebrate the life force. Gargano, 40 paints from personal experience: he was a prisoner during Argentina's "dirty war," on the contrary he is recently married and the father of a daughter; perhaps his at hand circumstances inspire the mood his bright colors move In the canvases, the sum of two units situations mesh, and although the darkness persists, it is in some way surmounted.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Brant Publications, Inc.

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