Pablo Bermudez
Alessia Terzaghi

May — July 2023

Alessia Terzaghi was born in Como, Italy in 1997.
She graduated in Enhancement of Cultural Heritage at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Milan with a thesis on the revalorization of industrial archaeologies. She took the master's course in Creative Communication for Art at the same academy. She had the opportunity to collaborate with the ArtCityLab organization, for which she managed the art residencies part of the NonRiservato project working closely with curator Rossana Ciocca.

In 2021 she participated in the realization of BienNolo, a biennial exhibition in Milan's Nolo neighborhood. Supporting curators and more than 60 artists, taking care of press office and social media managing aspects.

In 2022 she curated Pablo Bermudez's "Rock Paper" at Xavier Art Festival, Manila and "Pablo at Pablo by Pablo" for Pablo Gallery, Manila.

Pablo Bermudez was born in Pereira, Colombia, in 1988. In 1997 he moved to Cali for a short period, waiting to be able to join his father in Barcelona, the city where he lived until 2002. He then moved to Italy, near the city of Como, and in 2009 he beganhis artistic training at the Aldo Galli Academy of Fine Arts. Here he met the artis painter and teacher Giuliano Collina, for whom he worked as assistant. In 2013 he created his first faces in "Vacuum" and reworked glamorous paper magazines: through cuttings with the scalpel, he disfigured the initial image, subverting the original message. These works will then go on to constitute his first solo exhibition in the Spazio Pedraglio in Como.

In 2014 he has been selected for the prize "Dispositivos de especulación" Group Exhibition, curated by Alejandro Garces. Salón Traslude de Arte Contemporáneo
IMCFT Pereira- Colombia, after this exhibition he began a collaboration with Alejandro Garces and the Museo de arte de Pereira in Colombia. Between 2021 and 2022 Pablo Bermudez directed Spinoff Gallery in Milan, curating a series of exhibitions.

Pablo Bermudez is actually living and working in Manila.

Echoes of the Jungle’s Sweet Surrender

Curated by Alessia Terzaghi
14.07.2023
Kapitana Gallery

Nature, observed closely, with its forms and extraordinary peculiarity manifests in its details a mystical presence, and only art is able to capture this truth in natural things.

Pablo Bermudez's works represent a state of contemplation of nature that puts humans in tune with the world, thus achieving a collective consciousness as a unique form of life: a nirvana, an idyllic garden where nature and humans coexist harmoniously; where there is not even a division between organic and inorganic matter, one serves the existence of the other.

The seemingly abstract works consist of a naive creative act, photography is undermined by abstract painting as a form of destruction and deconstruction of the real image. Aggression to the tangible through a gestural act, almost a ritual by which the artist tries to free himself from the mass media image he has always resorted to in his research. Liquefied nature engulfs the photographed subjects, creating a tangle of forms. Among the vivid colors, reddish masses are glimpsed, like agglomerates of living flesh not yet covered with skin because in this alchemical vessel imagined by the artist there are no barriers of any kind. Formless beings float in natural space and are at one with it, immersed in the orgiastic and carnal pleasure of totality with the universe.

Natural forms have always been imitated by humans as they exert an attractive force on them. Similarly, the artist perceives this gravity toward nature and especially toward the jungle, which he experienced in Colombia, his native country, and which he will miss for much of his life; this lack will be partially filled here in Negros, where the nature of both the jungle and the sugarcane crops is so similar to his place of origin that the connections between the two countries are evident.

In the photographic shots we can see how the architecture of Balay ni Tana Dicang by taking up the forms of nature exists in a balanced way with and in it. Architecture becomes nature and architecture's task is to oppose oblivion, mediating between past, present and future. The house is the keeper of the memories of those who lived in it and contains all the objects that the inhabitants used and loved.

It is necessary to preserve what remains of the past as a precious legacy of previous centuries; nothing is built by man to be destroyed.

There is a fundamental relationship between nature and man's work and between things and the memory of them; without architecture we cannot remember the past.

The works therefore can help us perceive the vastness of the ecological system of which we are a part, transcending anthropocentric boundaries to embrace a more interconnected vision of life on Earth.

Art becomes aware of the anthropocene and creates an emotional connection between people and the natural world, renewing a sense of wonder and respect for nature. Art challenges our perceptions, stimulates a dialogue creating awareness for a sustainable future of living in harmony.