The fascination of the Pacific
The “Great South Sea”, as described by James Cook, appeared in the European imagination of the 18th century as an immense and undefined continent, made of water and islands.
No other distant land revealed by Enlightenment explorers gave rise to such a powerful vision. These remote cultures were often idealized, “unspoiled, virtuous without gods, just without laws”, becoming a lens through which Europe questioned itself at a time of profound cultural transformation.
Objects between material and imagination
Ships returned laden with unknown plants, animals, and objects: new forms shaped by distant cultures, striking for their lightness and inventiveness.
As later recognized by early 20th-century Surrealist thought, these works seem to belong to a suspended dimension, made of marine suggestions, voids, and subtle gestures, rather than solid and definitive masses.
Oceanic art: a vision of space
These are the works we now define as Oceanic art: sculptures and ritual objects in which form does not occupy space, but rather suggests it.
In contrast to African art, rooted in the strength of matter and the earth, Oceanic art appears to emerge from the sea: fluid, open, and shaped by movement and lightness.
The exhibition Pacific Winds
Dalton Somaré dedicates this exhibition to that universe with “Pacific Winds”, its first show entirely devoted to Oceanic art.
The title intentionally draws on an ambiguity typical of the English language, evoking both the winds of the Pacific and the visions that accompanied the European discovery of these territories.
Information
📍 Milan
📅 May 14 – 31, 2024
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