The Phosphorescence exhibition shows a series of paintings that focus on the isolation of the individual in our society. The series reflects situations of absolute intimacy where the subject is totally isolated from all surroundings and is immersed in the light emitted by certain electronic devices.
Light takes on a spiritual connotation. If someone unaware of the meaning of the screen itself were to observe the scenes that make up Phosphorescence, they would think something magical or mystical was happening.
Silence, stillness, calm. The invasion of the intimate space.
The characters appear from the shadows and are immersed in this light that traps them. The subtlety of the darkness makes their faces appear blurred, and lose their identity, in a metaphor for depersonalisation.
“A phosphorescent jewel gives off its glow and colour in the dark and loses its beauty in the light of day. Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.” (Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows)
Place: LAB 36, Calle Trafalgar 36, Barcelona.
Visiting hours: Tuesday – Friday 4pm to 8pm
When speaking about method, the repetition is mentioned, but rarely the insistence. To insist is synonymous of to research, and at the same time implies the development of an almost unbearable continuity sustained by the nerve, by a reliance which knows it will find a reward, not only in the effect, but also in the construction of a character. This exhibition explores -from the work of an artist devoted to painting-, the possibility of a different contemporary world, open to an esthetic that does not allow any kind of assimilation to our present and, thus, it opens itself in a radical way to futurity.
Boum! Boum! En avant la musique! is a 29 minute fiction movie filmed in Paris in 1974 in 16 mm colour (Kodakhrome II), interpreted by Jaume Xifra and Pierre Restany, and edited on DVD in 2007.
The pathetic figure of a Marshal wanders a mound of boots of dead soldiers, as a parody of the military leaders that always survive at the rear bases, draws a kind of rancid and triumphalist path. “The film inspires a metaphor that engages you into a soft delirium. It is a playful critique, resounding and burlesque, a savage attack against the inconsistency of the war, and a chant to the revealing and committed creativity”. (Pierre Restany)
It is a musical film with a wide repertoire of songs from the soldierly that includes speeches and original photographic documents from World War I.
Besides, if we go through the cast of actors, together with Xifra, Restany, Miralda himself –who interprets the soldier-, we can find names like Denis Rivière, Jean-Pierre Béranger, Liliane François or Roy Adzak. All of them evoque the Parisian artistic atmosphere that Miralda and Rossell frequented at the beginning of the 70’s
Place: Hotel YURBBAN, calle trafalgar 30, Barcelona.
Time: 10h a 19h
It is an imaginary journey inspired in the industry of mass tourism, entertainment, the elderly and the concept of a journey with no return. Filmed in super 8 in 1980 in a cruise as part of the unrealised project “By boat, by train and by plane”, the video, recently edited, presents itself as a story of five episodes: Goodbye, Initiation Ritual, Sweets&Enjoyment, Enigma and Uploading.
The video starts with the farewell of the passengers on board, afterwards they join us for a tour on the boat through a processional ritual through the halls, a cake banquet and a dance in the ballroom. To these cheerful and crowded scenes, follow others more silent with the hallways full of luggage that will afterwards be landed by the crew.
Engravings in the genre of “World Upside Down”, known since the 16th century, depict such scenes as a pig gutting the butcher, a child punishing his teacher, a man carrying a donkey on his back, man and woman exchanging roles and dress, and a beggar in rags magnanimously bestowing alms on a rich man. These engravings contain demons, chimeras, fish flying through the sky and death itself, variously with a scythe or in the mask of a plague doctor.
Mundus – the Latin “world” and Inverso – is both an Italian “reverse, the opposite” and the Old Italian “poetry,” which alludes to the art processing. In AES+F’s interpretation, the absurdist scenes from the medieval carnival appear as episodes of contemporary life in a multichannel video installation. Characters act out scenes of absurd social utopias and exchange masks, morphing from beggars to rich men, from policemen to thieves. Metrosexual street-cleaners are showering the city with refuse. Female inquisitors torture men on IKEA-style structures. Children and seniors are fighting in a kickboxing match. Inverso Mundus is a world where chimeras are pets and the Apocalypse is entertainment.
“Inverso Mundus” was created with the generous support of Blavatnik Family Foundation (USA) and Faena Art Foundation (Argentina), and with kind assistance from Fortuny (Italy-USA), PhotoFactory (Russia) and Triumph Gallery (Russia)
Galeria Senda is pleased to participate in Art Brussels 2016 that will take place for the first in Tour & Taxis. Artists presented include Adrián Balseca, Federico Martínez, Peter Halley, Gao Xingjian, James Clar, Glenda León, Oleg Dou and Sandra Vásquez de la Horra
This year, we have focused in works that build relationships between individuals through different cultures, religions and spirituality. To this effect, we will also present a selection of key works that are in direct dialogue with contemporary aesthetic. The artists of this year’s edition are Vasco Aráujo, Jordi Bernadó, Martín Chirino, James Clar, Peter Halley, Yago Hortal, Ola Kolehmainen, Glenda León, Anna Malagrida, Mathieu Pernot, Isabel Rocamora y Gino Rubert.
Senda began working with Peter Halley in 1992, when the Halley presented his work for the first time in its space on Pasaje Mercader. Since then, he has done four solo exhibitions at the gallery over a period of 23 years.
It was after a conversation with Halley, in which we spoke to him about the gallery’s new exhibition program, that the artist from New York proposed a four hands exhibition, a collaborative project with Barcelona’s Yago Hortal, who regularly exhibits with Senda.
The enthusiasm of these two artists for taking part in this collaboration has turned this exhibition into a unque event of special importance, something that goes further than the usualsolo painting show.
The exhibition ‘H-H. Halley meets Hortal’ has come together after eight months of conversations, e-mail exchanges, and the cross-posting of ideas, studies, and drafts in which both artists responded to each other’s practice.
This led to conversations about things they have in common — and others that differentiate them — inside the world of abstract painting. It highlights the New Yorker and the Catalan, experience and youth, rationalism and randomness, geometry and gesture, two approaches to the mastery of color… a back and forth dialogue about what unites them and what distances them.
At Senda, each artist will exhibit three large paintings, conceived of with the goal of establishing a conversation. In addition, Peter Halley and Yago Hortal have created five collaborative works on paper, signed by both artists.
Galeria Senda presents a new exhibition by Jordi Bernadó (Lleida, 1966) in which the artist sophisticates his critical view and shows a new angle on his own work. He presents his latest mural photographs simultaneously to the show ‘Henri Cartier-Bresson e gli altri’, curated by Giovanna Calvenzi in the Palazzo della Ragione de Milano.
To Bernadó, this exhibition is born from the premise: ‘To see is to invent’. Traditional documentary photography offers a genuine and evident representation. However, the moment when Bernadó chooses what he wants to portray and the way he wants to capture it, photography becomes a reinvention beyond pure representation.
For Pernot’s first exhibition at the gallery, the artist has chosen his most important series-investigations that have never been presented in Spain before.
In ‘Destruction’, Mathieu Pernot proposes a photographic narrative which originates from the gesture of destruction and questions memory through the images of disappearance.
