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6/5/2013

Francisco de Corcuera

Rosenfeld Porcini, London

Rosenfeldporcini is proud to present “The Impossible Existence of a Mathematician”, the inaugural UK solo exhibition by the Chilean artist Francisco de Corcuera.

The exhibition will present a group of paintings made especially for the show. All are large scale and of identical dimensions and include both a black series and much lighter, colour rich series. All are painted with acrylic on canvas. Although born in Chile in 1944, he has lived for many years outside his native land. A man who has lived immersed in the arts since childhood, he has always considered himself first and foremost a painter. It is in his pictures that he has concentrated his artistic search and the paintings have retained, through the various decades, the same philosophical preoccupation. He is, by his own declaration, a conceptual artist but, just as importantly, a real painter.

Brought up in a religious Catholic background, he has been haunted by the impossibility of living life by the kind of rigid structure which organised western religions impose upon the believer. He has endlessly posed himself the question: can one live life by order and rules alone or will life itself inevitably get in the way? His paintings, notwithstanding their formal development, have conceptually always illustrated this dynamic quandary. As a starting point he draws a complex grid made up of geometric lines, mathematical theorems and algebraic symbols; however this is only part of the picture. Once the grid is complete, the artist begins painting with a far greater sense of freedom; areas of colour, strange forms which are raised off the canvas and what appear like strips of coloured paper which seem to be detached in part from the paint surface but are, in reality, skilfully painted illusions – a homage to the trompe d’oeil tradition of the eighteenth century.

“Since very early on, I have been fascinated by illusion, particularly the magic in art, in the transformative power of painting.  The turning or changing of flat surfaces into an image of convincing reality was my main concern” As with all great art in whatever medium, the unravelling of a work’s narrative content (even true for abstract art like Corcuera’s) will always be open to interpretation. The critic Thomas Michael Gunther has also written about the artist’s work and found a very different way to write about the paintings.

“Blueprints of time, architectonic models, cosmic patterns, universal formulae, the paintings of Francisco de Corcuera trace the possibilities of change. Conceived in the dark night, like the poems of Saint John on the Cross which inspire him, these canvases explore the manifestations of the dynamic principle that moves the world.”  Once more Corcuera’s own words explain best what his huge ambition is: “for the past three decades or so, I have been trying to chart, to measure, to embody the very nature of thinking. That is, not only the image itself but the ontological "all in one".  Neither object nor subject but rather "sobject".” Francisco de Corcuera, 2013. Back in the middle of the sixteenth century an ancestor, Rodrigo de Corcuera was extremely well known as a cartographer so the ideas of drawing lines and mapping out systems or maps, real or imagined, have remained in the family.

In the timeless evolution of painting as a discipline and a medium, Corcuera’s work offers yet another distinctive voice. Furthermore over and above the debates that these sensual, delicate works encourage, Corcuera has managed to produce a series of paintings of great vibrant beauty. As we delve into the lightly but densely constructed mesh of marks, we lose ourselves within a world view that allow us both to enter into a private dialogue and then, seduced by their visual beauty, get lost in dream.

Notes to Editors:

Francisco de Corcuera was born in Chile in 1944. He currently lives and works in Morocco. He has featured in several solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums internationally including Musee d’Art Contemporain, Tangier, Morocco; Fine Arts Museum, Santiago, Chile; Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm; Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm. Corcuera’s works have been acquired by numerous private and public collections such as the Museum Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Malmo, Sweden; Museum of Modern Art, Santiago, Chile; the UN Collection and the First National Citibank Collection, New York; and the Cardenas Collection, New York. His work has further been shown at several fairs including Art Basel and the Biennale of Menton, France.

Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery

Founded in June 2011 by Ian Rosenfeld and Dario Porcini, directors of Italy’s Galleria Napoli Nobilissima, Rosenfeld Porcini occupies a prime location in the heart of the dynamic gallery district of London’s Fitzrovia. With 3,000 square feet

of gallery space, Rosenfeld Porcini has a strong international outlook committed to showing contemporary artists from around the world with an innovative exhibitions programme. Old Master and Modern shows will occasionally be presented, either monographic or themed, within the context of the contemporary space, exploring a firm curatorial belief in the continuity that underlies the story of art.

Private View: 7 May 6.30-8.30pm

Rosenfeld Porcini
37 Rathbone Street, London
Hours: 11am-7pm Tuesday to Saturday
Free Admission

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