THE UNIVERSE IS A BLUE TREE

Small, very small, calm, quiet and lonely, these are Pino Deodato’s clay men, on view at artsawa Dubai gallery. Lonely characters are suspended in the exhibition space, almost forming a capillary network of correspondences, voices, cross-references, and each one somehow associated with the other’s loneliness.“The universe is a blue Tree ” is the title of the exhibition, as well as the central essence of a “tranquillitate animi” that pervades Deodato’s small men: to look for something that, you know, you’ll be finding sooner or later, without a care.

The painted works in clay and bronze, together with a few experiments in pencil drawing on terracotta tile, contrast transient signs with firm material presence.The “rooms” where the small clay statues live allegorically exemplify, in a variety of ways, the means by which knowledge or wisdom is acquired, be it in a library or primordially infused, falling short total knowing. But maybe being content is enough, otherwise one would have to face the idea of never being able to achieve the real goal, or reach the finish line.

Perhaps the continuous quest for wisdom, without the anxiety of trying to reach the highest peak, is knowledge too. No existential crisis haunts these normal men. Their familiar thoughts have been intimately unveiled. While singularly placid in their daily meditations, they seem resolute in the collective experience of existence.The artist reaches a sort of “humanized symbolism” by telling small stories - what is intimately personal can become symbolic. In Deodato's work every "tile" of men imbued in their thoughts adds to a mosaic of relationships that fill the exhibition space. Little by little something is revealed, but only to those who will search.

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