An interesting exhibition by the Italian-born Ubud-based artist Mondo Zanolini opened on Saturday at Biasa Artspace in Bali.
Edmondo Zanolini, or Mondo, who settled in Bali some 20 years ago, is an artist who has ventured into many disciplines of the arts, from letters, performance and theater, to photography, film and video and painting.
Before settling in Bali, Mondo was a wanderer, who creatively traveled from Sweden to Romania and other countries in Eastern Europe, then crossed the oceans to wander among the peoples of Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.
A participant of the 1993 Venice Biennale, where he showed together with the Balinese painter I Putu Mokoh in the Arsenale, Mondo has joined various group exhibitions abroad.
He has also had four solo exhibitions, including in Rome, Bangkok and Phnom Penh; his first exhibition in Jakarta was with Murni, his late life partner and muse.
With such a load of rich experiences, it should not be surprising that his first solo exhibition in Indonesia, held at Biasa Artspace in Bali, is about memories encompassing his entire past.
Born in Padua in 1951, young Mondo was first of all interested in plays and the theater. He became a writer and a theater director, working with such celebrities as Marina Abramovich.
As he engaged with photography, film and video in a later stage, the theater was to remain an enduring reference.
"Theater" in this context means space, stage and actors, and this appears prominently in the paintings in the current exhibition titled "Follow the Rabbit".
Curated by Valentine Willie - owner of art spaces in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Manila - the works lay bare the phenomena and issues dominating the artist's youth and the world he trod thereafter.
The painting featuring a girl under the table, for instance, refers to the time when he, as other children used to do, was playing under the table in the middle of the room, but remained unobserved by the adults who, unaware of the young one's presence, were chatting away.
Eternally looking to the other, as he puts it, Mondo is also a free spirit who hates conventionalism. When he paints furniture with a figure holding on to it or sitting on it as in the painting Pole Position, it is to underline the fallacy of functional fixity.
But in this exhibition, it is the rabbit - just like the one in the famous book by C.S. Lewis Alice in Wonderland - that is to show us the world of Edmondo Zanolini. Mondo says he "found" the rabbit in a park in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh.
"There was a merry-go-round, but instead of children, the seats were filled with animals. I was particularly obsessed by the Rabbit, and followed it all the way with my camera," he says.
The rabbit became his inspiration for Rabbit Girl, and Duchess in Disguise, which is painted in versions of dark and white, and dark and red.
Duchess in Disguise has a mask of a rabbit, and a scar in the middle of the breast.
"I was thinking of Murni," Mondo says. Murni, his Balinese life partner and muse who died in 2006, was operated on several times, and the funny mask is very much in line with the humor she used to describe her situation.
Childmother and Child may also refer to Murni, who had dearly wanted a child; but it certainly refers to his little daughter born of his current wife and named for his mother Rebecca and Murni.
Mondo is an observer of women and children, and he paints them in many guises. Endearing images of the playful Rabbit Girl, and the mother showing her child a huge lantern during Chinese New Year celebrations, are con-trasted with the unusual understanding of the fallen angel: Lucifera and the Kids uses the name Lucifer in the understanding of the Lightbearer.
His images are flat, although a special technique makes them appear three-dimensional. Remarkably, his white images against a dark (it is not black) background is faintly reminiscent of Greek dramas, while the red images in the dark field, such as Family Crime, appear dramatically Asian. But they are all of a refined quality, sensitive; and with a dramatic undertone, they speak of an unspeakable melancholy.
- Photos courtesy of
Biasa Artspace
Follow the Rabbit
A solo exhibition by Mondo Zanolini
Until Dec. 20
Biasa Art Space
Jl Raya Seminyak 34
Kuta, Bali
+62 361 8475766
info@biasaart.com
www.biasaart.com
