Echo, solo show at Squaresrtreet Gallery, 10 Oct - 23 Nov 2024

A rebutting hand on one side, and a woman retreating on the other. This is Gianluca Crudele’s first work in his new series of paintings based on Echo and Narcissus from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He clearly stakes his claim in exploring the classical myth: Echo, whose name also functions as the title of the show. He uses the format of the two sided revolving frame to explore the idea of a decision—that, once one is made, it goes from one moment to the other, changing the momentum, and setting things in motion. Crudele’s Dissonant portrays the first and the last point in the story of Echo, as recto and verso respectively. In the beginning, she communicates through reverberations, the only language she possesses. Rejected by Narcissus, her body starts losing form, only for her voice to be left behind, thereby naming the phenomena we are left with when confronted with space: an echo. In the artist’s imagery, her body becomes one with the forest, becoming bark and branch.

Painted in the deep blue-greens of longing—a signature color palette for the artist—Crudele invites us to delve into his line of questioning: What does this myth really mean? Are we face-to-face with a moral tale about obsession and self-obsession, as the myth is usually told to us? Or is it about the limits of Echo’s being, and her inability to communicate, to speak in her own tongue? Is it really Narcissus’s rejection with which she begins the process of losing herself? Or is it that her subjectivity, like ours, is fundamentally intertwined with language?

[…]

Crudele’s rendering of the Greek tragedy brings it closer to our lives. In pieces such as Latent, Echo’s body hides behind trees, peeking out, trying to be one with the non-human entities around her. Ambiguous about whether she wants to stay hidden or wants to be recognised, the composition is reminiscent of Zheng Bo’s Le Sacre du Printemps (2022), wherein nude bodies negotiate with nature and form new relationships with them. Meanwhile in Visceral, Echo contours to the shape of her surroundings, while maintaining her former humanoid form. We witness her in a moment of translation; she is adjacent to nature, but not quite. Like Lorca’s play, these paintings offer us an insight into our relationship with language. Did we not begin our relationship trying to fit a form that preceded us? Did we not continue, trying to make it our own, while trying to make peace with language?

There exists an inherent dissonance in language that we must ignore in order to function, communicate, and express ourselves. It contradicts. It is vicious. It does not want you to own it. You can’t own it. But it also gives you the impression of being able to own it (think back to the times where you’ve used the possessive pronoun “my” to describe a tongue you speak). Crudele’s works in the current exhibition evoke this ambivalence central to the myth’s essence. In a conversation with the artist, he expressed his surprised to me when people talk about classical myths as if they were facts, meant to be reproduced “faithfully.” “They were always meant to be interpreted,” he said. “People get so possessive over them.” 

Curatorial text by Aaditya Sathish

The Shepard
105x85cm, Acrylic on wood, 2024

Narciso
55x75cm, Acrylic on wood, double sided, mounted on oak artist frame, 2024

Discordia
46x46cm, Acrylic on linen, 2024

Ad Astra
65x46cm, Acrylic on linen, 2024