Selected works by Roberto Coda Zabetta & Peter Burke, Spectrum Gallery in London

Spectrum Gallery is pleased to present a show of works by Roberto Coda Zabetta and Peter Burke. Zabetta, who is renowned for his large scale paintings and Burke, who’s sculptural work has secured him international acclaim are shown together for the first time, marking –not only Zabetta’s first exhibition in the UK, but rather an inspiring exploration of the interplay between east and west, new and old and sculpture and painting.

Zabetta was born in Biella (Itlay) in 1975 where he attended the Experimental Institute of Technology, followed by the Academy in Rome. He has since exhibited at numerous venues, including galleries in Italy, Germany, Indonesia and the United States. The works shown as part of ‘Out There’ have been made especially for the show, where they are exhibited alongside sculptural work by Peter Burke.

Zabetta’s large scale diptychs pair traditional Chinese imagery with a kind of unsettling portraiture, made manifest in an almost abstract-expressionist appliance of paint. The portraits seem –violently- to invade the images of warriors, aristocrats and mythical figures which sit serenely beside them. This invasion formally unites 2 worlds, which initially seemed divided by the physical partition of 2 panels. And though there is no obvious political dimension to the works, the power they exert could be understood as symptomatic of the economic and cultural power represented by both historical and contemporary China. The work thereby charts themes bespeaking the relationship between east and west and explores the role of painting in this dialectic. The implications of this interplay between culture, time and artistic form, thus imply something that is profoundly human.

And although formally seemingly non-related, this concern with the human condition, seems to conceptually unite Burke and Zabetta. Burke, who was born in London in 1944 is renowned for a sculptural practice that is heavily informed by his engineering background. Burke has been exhibiting since 1973 in galleries in Britain and abroad. His work is characterised by his use of heavy materials and methods of industrial production. His only piece that is featured in ‘Out There’ implies, at once, the fragility of human life and an almost Beuysian optimism in shedding light on it’s mysteries. The works’ formal lightness seems to encourage viewers to consider their own presence, both in and outside the gallery and invites the central discussion of arts’ ability to capture that which is somehow historical and yet wholly intimate.

Perhaps it is in the bridging of an interest in a fleeting human world, and the longevity of artistic form, that ‘Out There’ reveals something new and unexpected, namely a dialogue between sculpture and painting that bespeaks central issues of what Hegel might have deemed to be a world spirit.