www.galleriasavoca.com

Allan Hunt Badiner


When I first discovered Salvatore Savoca studio, tucked away in a small lane of the old Jewish ghetto in Rome, I was delighted to see such dynamic Buddhist imagery visible in the heart of the ancient Empire.
His large, majestic, seemingly three-dimensional images of the Buddha create an atmosphere of awe-inspiring calm and serenity yet emanate vitality and bodhicitta energy.
All of Salvatore's current work flows from a single moment in the small Laotian village of Luang Prabang on the Mekong River where monks mix seamlessly with lay people. It was a moment “in between” the prosaic and the numinous wherein he experienced the two as one. Evident to Salvatore was that the great wisdom and compassion of the Buddha are alive not only in the graceful lines of the monks robes but also in the sun-worn face of the peasant woman, or in the laughter of children.
From this realization seven years ago, Salvatore has been devoted to evoking the aesthetic and symbolic powers of the Buddha, demanding of the spectator a concentration of a contemplative kind.
Fluid forms, rich depth of color, and the potency of his figures transport one to a visceral refuge of awareness— not detached from the world and all of its suffering— but in the midst of it. Salvatore Savoca has given us a rare doorway into the dignity of the human spirit, and its yearning for realization.

Allan Hunt Badiner