Distrito 4

Miquel Mont

08 May - 14 Jun 2007

© Miquel Mont
Collage mural 4, 2007
Paint and vinile on wall
Dimensiones variables
MIQUEL MONT
"Plasmáticos"

Galería Distrito Cu4tro is showing recent work by Miquel Mont (Barcelona 1963). The artist lives and works in Paris. Since his exhibition at Espacio Distrito Cu4tro in 2004 Mont has had one-man shows at the Dels Angels Gallery Barcelona (2005-06); the Ruzicska Gallery in Salzburg (2006); & Aline Vidal in Paris. He also took part in Paris in La Force de l’Art group show, at the Grand Palais (2006) and in the V art Biennial at the Panera Centre in Lleida, among others. Miquel Mont ’s work forms part of some important public collections.
Now Mont is showing a selection of new pieces in three different series. The exhibition opens with a mural collage (extension and mural transfer of the piece that was initially created on paper) that contains a quote which puts forward a philosophical definition of the contemporary image. The quote works as a counterpoint to a series of pieces of work in which the relationship with the image provides a critical, allusive function, and questions the ineluctable evolution of any painting or artistic activity, even the most radical or the least figurative or representative painting.
"Plasmas" are paintings on laminated panels that use plasma technology whose dimensions evoke computer or TV screens. They are monochrome paintings in which an "emptying" of the screen and/or a rather radical distortion of the limits of this same screen has occurred. The palette of colours used also tries to evoke our mundane experiences with electronic colour (the depths of computers that data pass through), as well as the object-based nature of these screens.
"Autorretratos" consists of a series of transparent methacrylate tubes that several coats of thick paint have been poured onto. The length of the tubes corresponds to various parts of the artist’s body. 185 cm, which is his total height; 91 cm (from hand to mouth) or 27 cm (his head) to mention three examples. The paint that has been spilled on several actions reveals the material nature of the painting at a basic level, without any representative, figurative or expressive aim. This spilt paint is only perceptible if you turn around or above the pieces. As they are hanging from the wall, the tubes convey a vision of the paint behind the transparent, bright filter of the metacrylate, by which the material nature of the spillage vanishes, turning it into a painted "image”.
"Vertical"& "Horizontal" are elements that add to this questioning of the "image", and of the evolution of the painted image nowadays, by using the procedure of painting a third of the surface in bright white, leaving a third bare and another third "emptied", without any medium, so that both are revealed, the structure of the frame that holds up the medium and the wall, which is the final medium of the painting which turns any picture into a painted image.
 

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