calendario eventi  :: 

X

14/9/2005

John Baldessari

Galeria Pepe Cobo, Madrid

Galería Pepe Cobo features the show Prima Facie (Third State) by John Baldessari from September 15, 2005.

In 1970, John Baldessari (National City, California, 1931) carried out a radical act: he burned all the pictorial work he had produced between 1953 and 1966. This allowed him to join those artists who spearheaded the movement that critics have termed Conceptual Art.

An influential figure among artists of the subsequent generations, Baldessari presently teaches in the California Institute of Arts. Throughout his lengthy career he has built up a body of work within the aesthetic bounds of Conceptualism, initially making use of written language as his main tool.

Throughout the years images have progressively come to replace words attaining thus a principal role. Baldessari collects both black & white and colour photographs obtained from magazines, television and cinema. Most of which are fragmented or have been 'cropped'. These he later fits together in the compositive space with the aim of creating associations and metaphors not lacking in humour. It could be said that Baldessari is a pioneer of appropriationism, as is evident from his use of old Hollywood movie stills.

On this occasion, at Galeria Pepe Cobo, John Baldessari presents a collection of digitally printed photographs and their acrylics-on-canvas counterparts all of which have been produced in 2005. The name of the series Prima facie (i.e.: at first sight) seems to contradict the aesthetic and semantic end-product: a juxtaposition of a facial image and a few words from which the observer will try to extract an unlikely conclusion. Prima facie consists of large format panels: the one on left shows a saturated colour or black & white photograph; the one on the right, shows a list of words. In this case, the words are apparently adjectives of similar meaning, disconcerting sometimes or, to say the least, paradoxical. Baldessari dares the observer to feel challenged... perhaps to realise that art is a territory for doubt and interrogation.

Opening Thursday, September 15, 2005. 20.30 h. with the presence of the artist

Galeria Pepe Cobo
c/ Fortuny 39 28010 Madrid
Timetable: Monday to Friday- 9.30 to 14 h. and from 17 to 20.30 h.

stampa

permanent link