Nono Bandera
21 Mar - 16 May 2015
© Nono Bandera
Cruces y Caligrafía. 2015
Tinta china y témpera sobre ensamblaje de papel y legajos antiguos
97 x 155 cm.
Cruces y Caligrafía. 2015
Tinta china y témpera sobre ensamblaje de papel y legajos antiguos
97 x 155 cm.
NONO BANDERA
Miel de abeja
21 March - 16 May 2015
To make a collage is like building a honeycomb. I have been queen (rarely), from time to time (not often) a worker bee, and sometimes a drone. The arrangement of the papers share common walls like a cell structure, besides the sweet and viscous fluid called honey is like a work of art. Produced by bees from the nectar of flowers, plant secretions and excretions of insects, honey is the transformation of matter into another different thing, and is art not the mutation of materials into something else?. “
(Excerpt from the unpublished work of Nono Bandera “The fable of honey”).
Miel de abeja is the title of the seventh solo exhibition of NONO BANDERA at the Espacio Mínimo gallery, featuring 14 recently works belonging to his series Love Letters, launched in 2013 that has been continued and expanded since then. Formally this series is a continuation of previous Works -the oil paintings Patchworks- which the artist takes assembling love letters and manuscripts, and after that he displays his own world full of irony. In these manipulated assemblies of old papers and pieces of canvases, the presence of opposites appears as plot, where the artist confronts the sacred with the profane, and fragmentation between high and low culture is questioned.
As Susana Cendán writes in “500 m2 of canvases and 300 kilos of paint” exhibition’s catalog, Nono appropriates already existent paintings or drawings to opérate on them and bring them back to us transformed into a whole different reading. However I don’t think his attitude responds to a nihilistic weariness of what is already done. In fact, Nono selects, chooses and combines, but in no way does he disregard the joy of the creative act or its surprising capacity to transform what its given into a new and mysterious reality.
The work of NONO BANDERA feeds of circumstances and life experiences that have shaped his life, so his iconographic sources, and also their emotional register, are so much varied. These works reveal us some of them: popular art sold at furniture stores, old illustrations of scientific treatises, the thriller and science fiction, games of double meaning... and art history understood as an effect of continuous rewrite as in the work which titled the exhibition, where members of a family kneeling on a carpet of Teresa Lanceta quoted phrases extracted from the Fluxus movement.
In artist’s own words at the same catalog supra, All throught art history three recurrent themes have roomed together: life, love, and death, three unfathomable mysteries. Saying something substantial on these three subjects demands knowing what has already been said so as to avoid repetitions. After having constantly metabolized so many preceding images, we should ask ourselves whehter art is in itself a huge exquisite corpse made up of big doses of love, life and death. Indeed, is art not – in Duchamp’s own words- a game among all people of all eras?
NONO BANDERA (Málaga, 1958) studied Fine Arts in Madrid and Mexico City and he is Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Pontevedra. He exhibited regularly since 1995 in private galleries and Spanish and foreign public institutions and has participated in several international art fairs as ARCO in Madrid, FRIEZE ART FAIR in London, ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH Miami, ZonaMACO in Mexico DF, ARTISSIMA in Turin, CIGS in Beijing, SH Contemporary Shanghai ... His work is represented in major public and private collections as MNCARS (Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid); Zabludowicz Art Collection (London); CAC (Contemporary Art Centre of Malaga); Collection Deutsche Bank (Frankfurt, Germany); Benetton Foundation (Ponzano Veneto, Italy); Museum of the Academy of San Carlos (Mexico DF) ...
Miel de abeja
21 March - 16 May 2015
To make a collage is like building a honeycomb. I have been queen (rarely), from time to time (not often) a worker bee, and sometimes a drone. The arrangement of the papers share common walls like a cell structure, besides the sweet and viscous fluid called honey is like a work of art. Produced by bees from the nectar of flowers, plant secretions and excretions of insects, honey is the transformation of matter into another different thing, and is art not the mutation of materials into something else?. “
(Excerpt from the unpublished work of Nono Bandera “The fable of honey”).
Miel de abeja is the title of the seventh solo exhibition of NONO BANDERA at the Espacio Mínimo gallery, featuring 14 recently works belonging to his series Love Letters, launched in 2013 that has been continued and expanded since then. Formally this series is a continuation of previous Works -the oil paintings Patchworks- which the artist takes assembling love letters and manuscripts, and after that he displays his own world full of irony. In these manipulated assemblies of old papers and pieces of canvases, the presence of opposites appears as plot, where the artist confronts the sacred with the profane, and fragmentation between high and low culture is questioned.
As Susana Cendán writes in “500 m2 of canvases and 300 kilos of paint” exhibition’s catalog, Nono appropriates already existent paintings or drawings to opérate on them and bring them back to us transformed into a whole different reading. However I don’t think his attitude responds to a nihilistic weariness of what is already done. In fact, Nono selects, chooses and combines, but in no way does he disregard the joy of the creative act or its surprising capacity to transform what its given into a new and mysterious reality.
The work of NONO BANDERA feeds of circumstances and life experiences that have shaped his life, so his iconographic sources, and also their emotional register, are so much varied. These works reveal us some of them: popular art sold at furniture stores, old illustrations of scientific treatises, the thriller and science fiction, games of double meaning... and art history understood as an effect of continuous rewrite as in the work which titled the exhibition, where members of a family kneeling on a carpet of Teresa Lanceta quoted phrases extracted from the Fluxus movement.
In artist’s own words at the same catalog supra, All throught art history three recurrent themes have roomed together: life, love, and death, three unfathomable mysteries. Saying something substantial on these three subjects demands knowing what has already been said so as to avoid repetitions. After having constantly metabolized so many preceding images, we should ask ourselves whehter art is in itself a huge exquisite corpse made up of big doses of love, life and death. Indeed, is art not – in Duchamp’s own words- a game among all people of all eras?
NONO BANDERA (Málaga, 1958) studied Fine Arts in Madrid and Mexico City and he is Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Pontevedra. He exhibited regularly since 1995 in private galleries and Spanish and foreign public institutions and has participated in several international art fairs as ARCO in Madrid, FRIEZE ART FAIR in London, ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH Miami, ZonaMACO in Mexico DF, ARTISSIMA in Turin, CIGS in Beijing, SH Contemporary Shanghai ... His work is represented in major public and private collections as MNCARS (Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid); Zabludowicz Art Collection (London); CAC (Contemporary Art Centre of Malaga); Collection Deutsche Bank (Frankfurt, Germany); Benetton Foundation (Ponzano Veneto, Italy); Museum of the Academy of San Carlos (Mexico DF) ...