Amit Cabessa
Submission of the Soul
on view: March 15th - April 16th, 2019
opening reception: March 16th, 5-7 pm
LaMontagne Gallery is pleased to present the first U.S. solo exhibition of Amit Cabessa, Submission of the Soul:
A single drawn line has always touched my heart more than a whole novel or big ideas.
Amit Cabessa's large canvases encompass the viewer like the land of the Kibbutz he lives and works on. An expansive sense of ground, a distinct luminous quality and a natural Middle Eastern terrain infuse his vivid creations. The cacti native to his environment, the Star of David and the flag are appropriated as props in to his tactile works. These elements surface as archeological findings in the excavation of the vital vigor of the abstract paintings marking them with animating force.
Cabessa’s quest for discovery and self-proclaimed surrender is manifested in the intuitive tempo of the works. The artist annexes commonplace symbols which are almost clichés and detaches them from their connotations. The flag is a figurative characteristic of an abstract painting, the meeting summit between the abstruse and descriptive. Themovement in Cabessa’s creation lies in the tension between these polarities. He yearns to seize the force of life. His paintings have a pulse, a soul, a divine spark.
The use of flags represent Cabessa’s daily conquest in the studio. Entering the atelier isa form of territorial landing, the subjugation of an urge and of an internal personal space. The only way to truly conquer the paintings terrain is to surrender to its weathering. Cabessa is a prisoner to his own self proclaimed exercises of active surrender. Triumph is viable by total submission. This emblem embodies the abandonment of the ego, the self that without humility is subject to mannerism, and an automated aesthetic.
Cabessa's continual wrestling with identity facilitates the metamorphosis of his employed symbols and their abstracted form, reappearing throughout the work. The artist consistently challenges conventions of form and structured compositions with a dance of color and contrasting blacks in a rhythmic voice of quest and of self discovery. Strength is arrived at not from muscle and belligerence but from the core, the heart’s center.Cabessa subjects himself to a defenseless course of action as an artist. A citizen of the land of painting, Amit Cabessa is his own humble apprentice hanging on to his myriad flags as markers of surrender.
Text by : Lisa Motro