Luis Zerbini

LUIS ZERBINI

                              Every Jetson Has a Flintstone Inside

Max Wigram Gallery

106 New Bond Street

W1S 1DN

9^TH September- 1^st October

 Arriving 10 minutes late in a fluster I ring the buzzer and galumph up to the 2^nd floor. As I open the door I hear A click of a camera. My beautiful auburn haired friend has captured me coming in the door. She is grinning like a cat that’s got the cream. I couldn’t have picked a better exhibition for her to see. In the 10 minutes I wasn’t there she has already got the assistants fluttering around her with promises of back rooms and more of Zerbini’s delights. They are put on hold while we view the exhibition together.

Luiz Zerbini has created large scale beautifully lush paintings that you find yourself immersed into. This Brazilian artist is inspired by his personal archive of old objects, photos, texts and souvenirs and has evolved them into the dense environments. In ‘Mamangua Recife’ every inch is a delight to the eye. He plays with colour, light, perspective, realism and fantasy. The foreground becomes the background as your eyes feast upon its glorious lushness. There is a feeling of having arrived in a new land where everything is exciting and fresh. Old shoes mingle with lush vegetation as Bridget Riley like ripples of water dance light onto the modernist buildings. Every part of this painting asks for attention and yet it sits calmly in its own space.

On the other side of the room a table of cast resin vase sculptures contain succulent plants and bones which change as you walk around them, appearing and disappearing, merging into one another. Luis Zerbini asks us ‘when you look at something, you must forget what it is, and, at the same time, you must see inside the thing’.

I am already feeling visually full when an assistant arrives to take us into the back room. Here we see a beautiful Aluminium pigment painting dotted with coloured squares. I feel as if I am looking down from on high at a futuristic game being played out and tactics planned. After seeing more of his white, green and orange collages utilizing old slide mounts, which allude to processing and archiving, I am visually and mentally full to bursting.

As we enter back into the gallery we are greeted by the presence of gallerist Max Wigram languishing against the door frame while two men take his photograph.

We take our leave