Jorge Queiroz
05 Mar - 30 Apr 2009
JORGE QUEIROZ
Galería Helga de Alvear
5th March 2009 – 30th April 2009
Hours: 11:00 am - 2:00 pm & 4:30 - 8:30 pm
Opening: Thursday 5th March 2009 at 8:00 pm
Jorge Queiroz is having his first solo exhibition in Spain at Galería Helga de Alvear. Queiroz works almost exclusively in the field of drawing, in which he has created a uniquely personal world with a highly recognisable signature style.
In his work, the artist composes a particular cosmogony that weds the grotesque and the surrealist in scenes of horror and irony. In these works a quantity of elements are combined and interrelated to create an overall whole replete with references. Queiroz’s work is posited almost like a filter through which to look at and understand reality from another optic. The patent narrative thrust of his drawings has no apparent beginning or end yet there is an undeniable development throughout a surface full of information.
Figures that transmute into plants then become pathways that in turn transform into spaces which are ultimately folded in perspective and lost in the infinite. Queiroz’s drawings are weighted with an enormous density of motifs and his ability to use empty space and fill the sheet of paper is surprising. One can recognise a whole plethora of references, whether direct citations or influences. At first sight one discovers silhouettes that bring Goya or Piranesi to mind but also Mike Kelly or the grandmasters of abstraction. Jorge Queiroz’s works seem to be suffused with a certain visual promiscuity that induces the beholder to contemplate them for hours in search of new details and discoveries. Each one is a window onto the unique world of the artist.
The choice of drawing as his primary form of expression suits his uniquely personal style, being produced in the intimacy of the studio without any other intercession than the artist himself and his hand.
Technically speaking, he flaunts a reckless freedom in mixing watercolour with ink and with gouache in an amalgam that also moulds itself to the referenced motifs. His drawings are an accumulation of different layers of material and of information that are stacked up until forming a unitary whole with infinite readings.
Born in Lisbon in 1966, Jorge Queiroz currently lives and works in Berlin. He has exhibited at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, at the Serralves Foundation in Porto and he has also had work on show at the 4th Berlin Biennale and the 50th Venice Biennale.
Galería Helga de Alvear
5th March 2009 – 30th April 2009
Hours: 11:00 am - 2:00 pm & 4:30 - 8:30 pm
Opening: Thursday 5th March 2009 at 8:00 pm
Jorge Queiroz is having his first solo exhibition in Spain at Galería Helga de Alvear. Queiroz works almost exclusively in the field of drawing, in which he has created a uniquely personal world with a highly recognisable signature style.
In his work, the artist composes a particular cosmogony that weds the grotesque and the surrealist in scenes of horror and irony. In these works a quantity of elements are combined and interrelated to create an overall whole replete with references. Queiroz’s work is posited almost like a filter through which to look at and understand reality from another optic. The patent narrative thrust of his drawings has no apparent beginning or end yet there is an undeniable development throughout a surface full of information.
Figures that transmute into plants then become pathways that in turn transform into spaces which are ultimately folded in perspective and lost in the infinite. Queiroz’s drawings are weighted with an enormous density of motifs and his ability to use empty space and fill the sheet of paper is surprising. One can recognise a whole plethora of references, whether direct citations or influences. At first sight one discovers silhouettes that bring Goya or Piranesi to mind but also Mike Kelly or the grandmasters of abstraction. Jorge Queiroz’s works seem to be suffused with a certain visual promiscuity that induces the beholder to contemplate them for hours in search of new details and discoveries. Each one is a window onto the unique world of the artist.
The choice of drawing as his primary form of expression suits his uniquely personal style, being produced in the intimacy of the studio without any other intercession than the artist himself and his hand.
Technically speaking, he flaunts a reckless freedom in mixing watercolour with ink and with gouache in an amalgam that also moulds itself to the referenced motifs. His drawings are an accumulation of different layers of material and of information that are stacked up until forming a unitary whole with infinite readings.
Born in Lisbon in 1966, Jorge Queiroz currently lives and works in Berlin. He has exhibited at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, at the Serralves Foundation in Porto and he has also had work on show at the 4th Berlin Biennale and the 50th Venice Biennale.