Antonio Montalvo
16 Dec 2008 - 31 Jan 2009
ANTONIO MONTALVO
"El Sueño de Santa Úrsula / Saint Ursula’s Dream"
Exhibition dates: 16th December 2008 to 31st January 2009
Private View: Tuesday 16th December at 20:00
ANTONIO MONTALVO, (Granada, 1982), has chosen Saint Ursula’s Dream as the title for his first solo show, which is to be held at the Espacio Mínimo gallery. This project, specifically created for this show, consists of a series of paintings in various formats which are all, in one way or another, related to the collection of works that Vittore Carpaccio dedicated the life of Saint Ursula. Saint Ursula’s dream in particular depicts the very moment when, while sleeping, she receives notice of her future martyrdom.
In a chapter dedicated to Antonio Montalvo included in the book Arte desde Andalucía para el siglo XXI, F. JAVIER SÁNCHEZ writes: Beyond the practice of analytic painting, be it that which reflects on the medium and its conventions or where the focus is on institutions and their mechanisms, and also beyond formalisms or ideological critiques, the “position of the painter as spectator” achieves a relevant place within contemporary painting. (...) The museum space itself and its function become the themes to be explored in a new narrative painting. Montalvo assimilates these strategies placing paintings inside of his paintings, but he disassociates himself with the postmodern practice of appropriation and its critique of authorship, treating them instead as another motif in the painting’s narrative. In his work, however, the viewer is not visible and is not formulated in a naturalistic way. It is the pictorial language itself that places the viewer within a narrative about aesthetic culture. The absence of a unifying view point, that is, the dislocation of represented space through the collage-like multiplicity of perspectives, or the rupture of conventions about light and form, or the coexistence of opposite pictorial resources, make any reference to mimesis impossible as the only reality is that which goes through the images. The matte treatment of the surface, in which fugued geometric forms order the composition, causes a sustained tension within the pictorial field between two-dimensional plane and spatial representation. These interiors are large tall rooms flooded with neutral light which house artworks such as shiny and smooth minimalist surfaces, reproductions of classical sculptures or vitrines with unformed objects. These spaces turn into scenes where the artist’s gaze on the nature of its own medium is brought into view.
Antonio Montalvo constructs his painting practice between meta-discourse and homage, pointing towards ways of exploring aesthetics from the perspective of a self-conscious practice of painting, moving away from postmodern complacency and accessing the unconscious mind through the images’ multiplicity of visual meaning. The results are mysterious, uncanny, and unclassifiable paintings.
ANTONIO MONTALVO is a graduate of Fine Art from Universidad de Granada. He has taken part in some group shows such as -Certamen Andaluz de Artes Plásticas 2006, Premios Injuve para la Creación Jóven 2007, Circulo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, Generación 2008. Premios y Becas de Arte Caja Madrid...- and his work can be found in Spanish collections such as Fundación Rodríguez-Acosta, Fundación CajaSur, Instituto Andaluz de la Juventud, Museo Gustavo de Maeztu or Facultad de Bellas Artes de Granada.
"El Sueño de Santa Úrsula / Saint Ursula’s Dream"
Exhibition dates: 16th December 2008 to 31st January 2009
Private View: Tuesday 16th December at 20:00
ANTONIO MONTALVO, (Granada, 1982), has chosen Saint Ursula’s Dream as the title for his first solo show, which is to be held at the Espacio Mínimo gallery. This project, specifically created for this show, consists of a series of paintings in various formats which are all, in one way or another, related to the collection of works that Vittore Carpaccio dedicated the life of Saint Ursula. Saint Ursula’s dream in particular depicts the very moment when, while sleeping, she receives notice of her future martyrdom.
In a chapter dedicated to Antonio Montalvo included in the book Arte desde Andalucía para el siglo XXI, F. JAVIER SÁNCHEZ writes: Beyond the practice of analytic painting, be it that which reflects on the medium and its conventions or where the focus is on institutions and their mechanisms, and also beyond formalisms or ideological critiques, the “position of the painter as spectator” achieves a relevant place within contemporary painting. (...) The museum space itself and its function become the themes to be explored in a new narrative painting. Montalvo assimilates these strategies placing paintings inside of his paintings, but he disassociates himself with the postmodern practice of appropriation and its critique of authorship, treating them instead as another motif in the painting’s narrative. In his work, however, the viewer is not visible and is not formulated in a naturalistic way. It is the pictorial language itself that places the viewer within a narrative about aesthetic culture. The absence of a unifying view point, that is, the dislocation of represented space through the collage-like multiplicity of perspectives, or the rupture of conventions about light and form, or the coexistence of opposite pictorial resources, make any reference to mimesis impossible as the only reality is that which goes through the images. The matte treatment of the surface, in which fugued geometric forms order the composition, causes a sustained tension within the pictorial field between two-dimensional plane and spatial representation. These interiors are large tall rooms flooded with neutral light which house artworks such as shiny and smooth minimalist surfaces, reproductions of classical sculptures or vitrines with unformed objects. These spaces turn into scenes where the artist’s gaze on the nature of its own medium is brought into view.
Antonio Montalvo constructs his painting practice between meta-discourse and homage, pointing towards ways of exploring aesthetics from the perspective of a self-conscious practice of painting, moving away from postmodern complacency and accessing the unconscious mind through the images’ multiplicity of visual meaning. The results are mysterious, uncanny, and unclassifiable paintings.
ANTONIO MONTALVO is a graduate of Fine Art from Universidad de Granada. He has taken part in some group shows such as -Certamen Andaluz de Artes Plásticas 2006, Premios Injuve para la Creación Jóven 2007, Circulo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, Generación 2008. Premios y Becas de Arte Caja Madrid...- and his work can be found in Spanish collections such as Fundación Rodríguez-Acosta, Fundación CajaSur, Instituto Andaluz de la Juventud, Museo Gustavo de Maeztu or Facultad de Bellas Artes de Granada.