Marais, Paris
Ruben Pang
Nemesis
PactMyth is a world where our interactions with nature, the enemy, and history unfold within the same sphere. Everything there possesses a character and an emotional temperament. This world is governed by the passions of nature, of gods, and of human beings — existence itself becomes a character endowed with emotion. Passions rise like violent winds: betrayal, memory, vengeance, and love clash in an unrelenting struggle. This battle is charged with power, but it does not descend into chaos. On the contrary, it gives rise to a new order. The paintings of Ruben Pang seem to illustrate the mythology of the present — a world where myth has shifted, from nature to our consciousness, from the external to the internal. Painted directly on aluminium, without preparatory drawing, his works emerge like intuitions, revelations. Nothing is predetermined; everything transforms before our eyes. Ruben Pang’s figures dwell in the in-between — between body and spirit, divinity and memory, light and disappearance. They burn gently, like embers in the dark. We glimpse a torso streaked with blue lightning, a face split by light, a hand extended yet unfinished. They do not speak to reason, but to the unseen part of ourselves. It is a world where the laws of ethics and the granting of rights are not enough to establish order. We need this inner myth, this primal tension, for a new sense to emerge. We need a story so different from what we thought of ourselves — until we realize we were already changing. Here, light does not simply illuminate. It pierces. Painting does not describe; it invokes. These are not portraits, but apparitions. Reality becomes membrane, and the visible begins to tremble. A world where heaven and earth are not so far apart. A world where the universe appears not as mere sensory data, but as a force animated by will. An existence that does not belong to space and time, but rather to a realm entirely shaped by the will to transform the world. A world where the arrival of light marks the moment of total transformation of the being. —Akiva Lasry, The Birth of Light