On June 18th the MARCO museum of Vigo will have the opening of Glenda León’s “Música de las formas”, which has been commissioned by José Jiménez.
The cuban artist return with a series of works which are representative of the bond between poetry and objects, thus creating a synthesis between visual and sonic worlds. León uses mundane objects and raw materials and she transforms them in a way that reveals their metaphorical power. That way, the works present a sensible look towards what is quotidian. His works transit between spheres of intimacy and openness, manifesting her ability to create new meanings through a process of contextualising, manipulating and associating objects.
In “Música de las formas,” the artist evidenciares music’s influence on her growth, both on a personal and an artistic level, and how interconnected it is to the movement of the stars. José Jiménez mentions Pithagoras to justify this phenomenon to which the latter refers to as the “cosmo’s harmony” as well. León manages to connect the ground with the sky, the mundane and the extraordinary.
Estrellas Masticadas (2015) is a great example of the aforementioned, given that the artist creates celestial bodies by linking together gums that were disposed and stuck to the ground. By doing so she is creating a debate between the mundanity of something so basic as chewing gum and the solemnity of those starts that so many other geniuses had observed in a past.
All those months spent inside feeling trapped within four walls triggered Peter Halley into re-thinking the artistic world he had been inventing since the 80’s. Changes in mode of life resulted in changes in mode of expression, as the New Yorker began to opt for alternative confines to his previously “conduit” and “cell-like” paintings.
Nine months after his exhibition New Paintings at galeria Senda, Peter Halley has taken his laberinthian explosion of colors to the walls of the Nivola Museum in Orani, Sardegna. ANTESTERIA, which gives name to the exhibit, references the Greek festivity in devotion of the god Dyonisus and the arrival of spring.
Parting away from the static, rectangular and lethargic aspect of the conventional canvas, Halley has adapted his color induced shapes to the walls of the museum in a manner resemblant to those done by previous artists throughout history. Reminiscent of the legacy that traces back to cave paintings all the way to fourteenth-century fresco paintings such as those done by Giotto in the Arena Chapel at Padua, Halley has brought out a cathartic experience by combining his signature neon colored shapes with the geometric motifs of the room. The arched windows, with stained glasses similar to those in churches, are in conversation with the dynamic and psychedelic paintings of the American artist.
A pristine place brought to life; a secular space made to receive an attention that dances the line between admiration and devotion. The signature cell structure of Halley’s work is distorted, made to appear as a continuum of lines that lead the viewer’s gaze from one side of the room to the other, stopping in between to stare into the kaleidoscopic splatters on the west and east walls, as well as the lower panels, which combine geometric shapes with more free draw lines.
Peter Halley is reinventing himself according to the contemporary world we live in. His art fluctuates in the same way customs, culture and capitalism do. He proved so when he exhibited New Paintings in the gallery last September, when he moved away from the square canvas and took on a different meaning for it. To him the canvas no longer ought to be static, but by combining luminous colors with irregular confines, he contrasted textures and reliefs that brought together the industrial and urban register, and the sensuality of tactile experience.
To the artist, the cells and conducts are not simply geometric compositions, but rather, symbolic images of the social schemes that surround us. A turn in his analysis of the models of organisation and communication in contemporary societies.
In April, Senda Gallery presented Roger Ballen’s new project Roger the Rat.
The work is composed of a series of black and white photographs produced in Johannesburg between 2015 and 2020, accompanied by a video made during the months of confinement.
Through these images, Roger Ballen documents a creature half-human, half-rat, living in isolation from society. The character, motivated by his loneliness, attempts to create new companions to share his daily life, but the isolation generates feelings of frustration and rage.
Roger the Rat personifies the impact of loneliness, exclusion, and the uncomfortable feeling of suffocation that afflicts human beings when confined in enclosed spaces. The psychic consequences of the pandemic are explored throughout the images through the absurd actions of the protagonist, which produce a feeling of identification and empathy on the part of the visitors.
The son of a photo editor at Magnum, Ballen has worked as a geologist and mining consultant before launching his own photographic career, documenting small villages in rural Africa and their isolated inhabitants. His images are at once powerful social allegories and disturbing psychological studies. Ballen’s work “Terrallende” was considered one of the most extraordinary photographic documents of the late 20th century. It was awarded Best Photographic Book of the Year at PhotoEspaña 2001 in Madrid. He was awarded Best Photographic Book of the Year at PhotoEspaña 2001 in Madrid.
His distinguished photographic style has evolved using simply a square format and a black and white color scheme. His early work has a clear influence on documentary photography, but during the 1990s he developed a style that he described as documentary fiction. His distinctive photographic style has evolved using simply a square format and black-and-white color scheme.
Donald Sultan. Autumn Mimosa (Feb, 2018) Enamel, latex, graphite and tar on masonite. 122 x 244 cm
From June 3rd to 6th, Galeria SENDA presents a group exhibition at Art Brussels, one of the most renowned contemporary art fairs in Europe and an unmissable event on the international art calendar. Art Brussels is the ideal opportunity to discover the artistic and cultural richness of the art and cultural scene of the European capital, attracting a considerable number of collectors, curators, gallery owners, art professionals and art lovers from all over the world. Each year, the fair welcomes around 25,000 visitors to the emblematic Tour & Taxis building in the heart of the Belgian capital.
Instead of the usual format, this year the Belgian fair will offer a new edition: the Art Brussels week will feature Viewing Rooms, i.e. online exhibitions, from June 2nd to 14th and will also present physical gallery tours from June 3rd to 6th. For those unfamiliar with the term “viewing room,” this is a digital system that allows viewers to explore and examine works of art, either through high-quality images, videos or detailed descriptions. These viewing rooms are often used at art fairs and galleries as a way to show works of art to those who cannot physically attend the place where the works are exhibited. Through the “viewing rooms” visitors can, apart from appreciating the pieces, obtain information about them and the artists and even contact the gallery to make inquiries or purchases. All you need is an Internet connection and a great desire to enter into this extrasensory experience of online visits.
Anthony Goicolea. Inflatable Pieta. Oil on raw linen canvas. 90 x 130 cm
This year, for the physical gallery tour, SENDA invites the public to visit our current exhibition: “Day and night: New paintings and drawings” by Donald Sultan. Sultan is a contemporary painter, sculptor and printmaker known for his large-scale paintings, which explore the dichotomies between beauty and rudeness and realism and abstraction through the construction of a particular imaginary rich in color and form. With the fusion of techniques and materials, Sultan manages to build works that dance between the representation of images directly recognizable in the collective imagination and the purest abstraction. A great example of this mix of concepts is his ability to reinvent a technique as old as still life, using images of lemons, poppies, fruits, flowers and everyday objects, which give a breath of fresh air to the grandeur of his compositions.
The online exhibition continues to present our selected artists in the Viewing Room so that the shows can reach many more people. The artists chosen to represent our gallery in Brussels are Peter Halley, Jaume Plensa, Yago Hortal, Anthony Goicolea, Jordi Bernadó,Oleg Dou, Glenda León, Stephan Balkenhol, Gino Rubert and Evru Zush. The exhibition includes painting, photography, sculpture and drawings to create a constellation of works representing multiple techniques and artistic expressions. The wide variety of artistic proposals for this art week in Brussels aims to extol the most significant attributes of our gallery, advocating a brutal combination that perfectly represents the exquisiteness of the contemporary art that SENDA is committed to exhibit.
Do not miss this unique artistic encounter where works from different corners of the world converge for a few days in Brussels to be appreciated by a wide range of attendees and art lovers, in a unique cultural experience.
Yago Hortal. Z5. Acrylic on linen. 2020Jordi Bernadó. Paris (FR 336.1). Photography. 2016Glenda León. Acoustic Painting. Drawing. 2020
