CONTEMPLATIONS
Onkaf Foundation, New Delhi, India
Critical text by Pragya Saxena
The exhibition "Contemplations" originates from Ivo Cotani's first experience in India, a direct, immediate encounter with a completely new world, where the research gradually transforms into artwork. Here, through direct immersion and without filters, Cotani leads us on a visual andconceptual journey, shaped by cultural impact and confrontation, in which every tension resolves itself in contemplation. Art becomes the point of convergence where opposites cease to exist as opposing forces: contradictions dissolve, contrast is annulled, and the gaze becomes meditative.
Cotani explores this equilibrium through a variety of languages: from paintings in the series "Cables", which transform human chaos into visual geometry, to the "Concepts of Temple", referencing the very etymology of templum, understood as an imaginary and sacralized space.
His works populate the space with enigmatic figures: the “Frivolous Rishi", who lose their aura and mock their own wisdom, bored with proselytism; “Fragments of frames” that become relics of a mental architecture, that cannot contain the infinite; and an interactive installation, "I Am", which invites the viewer not only to question their own presence and identity, but also to abandon it, dissolving into a space that is pure contemplation. Cotani transforms matter into vision, mark into thought, and contrast into synthesis. And in this imaginary space, everything becomes a temple.
