BOSCO SODI: MON PÈRE
KÖNIG GALERIE is delighted to present MON PÈRE, Bosco Sodi’s third exhibition with the gallery and his first in one of its Berlin locations. The title, which translates to “my father” in French, reflects Sodi’s ongoing exploration of materiality and spirituality.
March 7 – April 20, 2025
In this homage to his father, Sodi has created a meditative installation featuring 10 new mixed–media canvases surrounding a century-old olive tree placed at the center of the former church. Specially conceived for the nave of St. Agnes, the exhibition resonates deeply with the spiritual atmosphere and legacy of the building, offering a captivating interplay of colors, textures, and space.
The olive tree slowly takes its place in the landscape, tearing up barren soil, holding tight to its leaves in the face of the wind; always casting shade, moving forward, slowly filling its fruit with oil, forever reconciled to the chaos of the elements, finding its place in the earth. The stone and wood embedded into the green paintings mirror the olive tree, carving up the barren matter of the canvas, while at the same time being cradled by it. The wood and stone become the inhabitants of the natural scape of the painting, becoming as they exist in harmony with its matter. Each piece of wood reflects the attitude of the olive tree; a reconciliation with the chaos of the compositions.
The cycle of Sodi’s work is one which embraces the accidents of the process of creation, miming the turmoil of the natural forces that the olive tree itself undergoes. The meditative sequence in which he renders his works, the energy that drew him to each of the fragments embedded in the mixed–media canvases, the cracks that develop by the temperament of paint, these are like the ever–changing elements of nature. The fragments then take their place alongside the chaos and exist harmoniously. If the cherry blossom reflects the beauty of impermanence in the aesthetic philosophy of Wabi-Sabi, the olive tree reflects Wabi–Sabi’s embrace of how it is that things just are, indifferently producing its oil. In that way, the paintings are indicative of the attitude of nature, always in the process of becoming as it encounters disorder and randomness.
MON PÈRE evokes the father through the gravitas of Bosco Sodi’s works, along with the space, and the tree. The scale of St. Agnes invokes the immensity of the father, the paintings his solemness and dignity, and the tree his longevity and strength, all evoked in the dialogue between the works and their surroundings in meditative contemplation. MON PÈRE is an exhibit about the father, life, rebirth, peace, reconciliation, dignity, and harmony.