Jose' Maria Mellado
dal 4/2/2010 al 5/2/2010
Segnalato da
4/2/2010
Jose' Maria Mellado
Galeria Tomas March, Valencia
Paisaje: El Eterno Retorno. The concept of the 'eternal return' was for a long time the core concern in western moral philosophy. Mellado brings it back again in order to submerge us in timeless realities, in non-places frozen in time and in space, inextricably bound to past, present and future civilizations, that reveal how nature always ends up holding sway over the world.
On Friday February 5th, Galería Tomás March is opening an exhibition of the latest work by the artist José María Mellado (Almería, 1966).
This show is the result of a process in which the artist interprets “how modern man strives to stake out a place for himself in history, to leave a legacy, to add a grain of sand before his meager time is over”, paraphrasing the philosopher Mircea Eliade, whose book The Myth of the Eternal Return lends its name to the title of the exhibition Paisaje: El Eterno Retorno [Landscape: The Eternal Return], based on a lineal vision of time in which the natural coexists with the constructed.
The concept of the “eternal return” was for a long time the core concern in western moral philosophy. Mellado brings it back again in order to submerge us in timeless realities, in non-places frozen in time and in space, inextricably bound to past, present and future civilizations, that reveal how nature always ends up holding sway over the world.
Compounding Eliade’s theory, Nietzsche posited that it is not only events that repeat themselves throughout the course of history, but that philosophies, ideas and feelings return once and again in an endless repetition dictated by nature.
In Mellado’s photos we can observe how, once it has lost its routine and functions, any construction abandoned by man is left in the hands of a wild nature, which quickly wields its authority over its walls. Through an artificially credible, though sometimes rationally impossible, compositional language the artist tries to recover a world that was, is, and will be, the same, and that takes on meaning precisely in this becoming of historical events that always takes us back to the point of departure, in an infinite return.
Abandoned sites in barren wasteland, uninhabited mansions with spectral hauntings, unoccupied buildings that now serve as footings for timeless undergrowth and weeds and shipwrecked boats, are some of the portraits by Mellado in this exhibition, offering us further demonstrations of his recognized liking for abstracting what is truly interesting, the magic contained within what is generally accepted as mundane, vulgar or even ugly and, a priori, lacking in interest.
Mellado has work in many major public and private collections such as MNCARS, Fundación Vocento (Diario ABC), Fundación Unicaja, Region of Madrid Contemporary Art Collection, Fundación UNED, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Cáceres, Caja San Fernando and the Collection of the regional government of Cantabria, among others. His work is regularly on view at art fairs like ArtBasel, Photo Miami, Pulse Miami, ARCO, DFoto, ArteLisboa, Estampa, Feriarte, Forosur, ArteSevilla and ArteSantander, where he is currently represented by the galleries Tomás March (Valencia), María Llanos (Cáceres), Blanca Berlín (Madrid), Estiarte (Madrid), Llucià Homs (Barcelona), Ana Vilaseco (A Coruña), Full Art (Seville), Global Art Resources (Zürich) and Crown Gallery (Belgium).
Opening Friday February 5th, 2010
Galeria Tomas March
Aparisi y Guijarro, 7 - Valencia