Wifredo Díaz Valdéz
27 Aug - 06 Nov 2011
WIFREDO DÍAZ VALDÉZ
Construir Desconstruyendo
27 August - 6 November, 2011
The exhibition offers a glimpse at the fascinating work of rediscovered Uruguayan artist Wifredo Díaz Valdéz (born 1932), who creates unusual wooden sculptures out of imaginatively deconstructed everyday objects.
The Uruguayan artist Wifredo Díaz Valdéz has over the past decades created a free-standing work without parallel. He constructs his artworks by deconstructing furniture, tools and all sorts of everyday utensils to be found in the rural regions of his homeland, and doing so with the greatest artisanal precision. The artist begins by analysing his object, considers the conditions of its wooden structure and assesses its artistic potential. Then he proceeds to his “carpenter” work. The result in each case is what seems like the original object, unchanged, but which can, with the addition of wooden plugs and hinges, be successively opened or unfolded in a playfully elegant fashion. In the process of this metamorphosis the memory of the original function of these objects literally vanishes in space. A dismantled old wagon wheel or an unfolded chair suddenly take on symbolic character; everyday banality is transmuted into the abstract.
In his work, Wifredo Díaz Valdéz reverses the cycle of growth and decay, as well as the course of time as such. Out of nature, what once was organically grown wood, emerges a cultural object of use, which is then transformed into a work of art, and is thus torn both from its organic cycle and from its physical decay (as a no longer usable relic of civilization).
Construir Desconstruyendo tells of becoming and decaying, life and death, inside and outside, before and after, sense and nonsense, seriousness and play, of time, of space, and of life itself.
The exhibition is accompanied by an abundantly illustrated catalog featuring a conversation between Wifredo Díaz Valdéz and Hans-Michael Herzog
Construir Desconstruyendo
27 August - 6 November, 2011
The exhibition offers a glimpse at the fascinating work of rediscovered Uruguayan artist Wifredo Díaz Valdéz (born 1932), who creates unusual wooden sculptures out of imaginatively deconstructed everyday objects.
The Uruguayan artist Wifredo Díaz Valdéz has over the past decades created a free-standing work without parallel. He constructs his artworks by deconstructing furniture, tools and all sorts of everyday utensils to be found in the rural regions of his homeland, and doing so with the greatest artisanal precision. The artist begins by analysing his object, considers the conditions of its wooden structure and assesses its artistic potential. Then he proceeds to his “carpenter” work. The result in each case is what seems like the original object, unchanged, but which can, with the addition of wooden plugs and hinges, be successively opened or unfolded in a playfully elegant fashion. In the process of this metamorphosis the memory of the original function of these objects literally vanishes in space. A dismantled old wagon wheel or an unfolded chair suddenly take on symbolic character; everyday banality is transmuted into the abstract.
In his work, Wifredo Díaz Valdéz reverses the cycle of growth and decay, as well as the course of time as such. Out of nature, what once was organically grown wood, emerges a cultural object of use, which is then transformed into a work of art, and is thus torn both from its organic cycle and from its physical decay (as a no longer usable relic of civilization).
Construir Desconstruyendo tells of becoming and decaying, life and death, inside and outside, before and after, sense and nonsense, seriousness and play, of time, of space, and of life itself.
The exhibition is accompanied by an abundantly illustrated catalog featuring a conversation between Wifredo Díaz Valdéz and Hans-Michael Herzog