Jorge Pardo
dal 30/3/2009 al 1/8/2009
Segnalato da
30/3/2009
Jorge Pardo
K21 Kunstsammlung, Dusseldorf
Please note the time shifting! A comprehensive exhibition: encompassing objects, pictures, and sculptures, it provides an overview of Pardo's production over the past 15 years. In his multi-faceted artistic concept, shapes, colours and the awareness of space are articulated as the fundamental conditions of a contemporary aesthetic experience. His objects, pictures, and forms suspend the boundaries distinguishing design, architecture, sculpture, and painting.
Oval spots in pale green, yellow, and orange bubble across the reddish-brown walls and onto the ceiling, while a band of light composed of green and blue blades bisects and accentuates the tall room.
The Bar am Kaiserteich in the K21, designed by Jorge Pardo in 2002, is a much–favored Düsseldorf meeting place.
The K21 Kunstsammlung NRW is the first European museum to devote a solo exhibition to this in 1963 Havanna born Cuban-American artist.
Encompassing objects, pictures, and sculptures, it provides an overview of Pardo’s production over the past 15 years. At the center of interest are Pardo’s virtuosic designs of surfaces, which take the form of pictures, wall objects, and relieves, all of them offering a profusion of opulent and sensuous impressions.
The exhibition is being organized in close collaboration with the artist who lives and works in Los Angeles.
The core of the presentation is formed by three new pavilions designed by Pardo and his team, structures based on an architectural type found frequently in the tropics, the so-called “palapa.”
Open at the sides, the roofs traditionally covered in palm leaves, these huts provide shelter from the sun while serving as gathering places.
During his studies in the 1980s at the Art Center of Design in Pasadena/California, Pardo became one of the first artists of his generation to exploit the computer in his creative production.
Pardo's pieces are produced in a workshop that is organized like a manufacturing unit, where he collaborates with artistic assistants, experienced craft experts, and architects.
In the “Jorge Pardo Sculpture Studio” in Los Angeles, craft techniques are combined in a singular way with digitally–guided production. The objects, pictures, and forms created there suspend the boundaries distinguishing design, architecture, sculpture, and painting from one another, effacing the line between autonomous and applied art while establishing unexpected links between the various media.
In formal terms, Pardo's work is strongly indebted to the vocabulary of Classical Modernism (from Hans Arp to Henry Moore) and to design history (from Charles Eames to Verner Panton).
Influences derived from Conceptual Art and from practices of institutional critique (from Daniel Buren to Michael Asher and Heimo Zoberning) also play a vital role.
Pardo refers to himself as a sculptor, and his field of activity is the space within which the viewer moves. His oeuvre’s most conspicuous feature is the seductiveness of its extraordinary coloristic splendor and formal variety.
Accompanying the exhibition is a catalog designed by the Jorge Pardo Sculpture Studio and containing contributions by Alex Coles, Christina Végh, Doris Krystof, and Barbara Steiner (Klaus Richter Verlag, Düsseldorf, 144 pp. with ca. 90 color illustrations).
A wide-ranging program accompanies the exhibition, and includes lectures, discussions, seminars, and workshops as well as excursions to the Düsseldorfer Stadtwerken (Düsseldorf Municipal Utilities), whose historic turbine hall has been decorated by Jorge Pardo with enormous murals and a floor mosaic.
But standing behind these effects is an artistic approach that brings together art and life in order to radically interrogate the forms and functions of design and decor with regard to their contemporary societal significance.
In Pardo’s exhibition, these accessible palapas serve as display cases and cabinets.
While the outer boundaries consist of airy curtains, a central interior space is formed by ornamentally perforated wooden walls. Containing objects drawn from three different working phases of this artist’s career, the palapas thematize concealment and disclosure, a synthesis of function and presentation that is emblematic of Jorge Pardo’s artistic intentions.
Image: Untitled, 2008, Mdf, plastic laminate, acrylic, 89,2 X 82,5 X 2 cm, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, © Jorge Pardo, Foto: Simon Voge
Press contact:
Sven Bergmann, Head of Media Relations
Telephone: +49 (0) 211 8381 - 630 Fax: +49 (0) 211 8381 - 601 bergmann@kunstsammlung.de
The historic Turbine Hall of the Düsseldorf Municipal Works was designed by Jorge Pardo in 2002.
K21 Jorge Pardo - Reception and artist talk in the historic Turbine Hall
Tuesday, March 31, 2009 between 8:00 pm and 10:00 pm in the historic Turbine Hall of the Düsseldorf Municipal Works.
The event will conclude with a talk given by the artist and Alex Coles, art critic
K21 Kunstsammlung
Nordrhein-Westfalen Ständehausstraße 1 - 40217 Düsseldorf
Opening Hours K21
Tuesdays to Fridays 10.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays 11.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.
Closed on Mondays
1st Wednesday in the month 10.00 a.m. to 10.00 p.m, with a KPMG Kunstabend (Art Evening) beginning at 6 p.m.