Jorge Galindo
11 Jul 2009 - 10 Jan 2010
JORGE GALINDO
"La Pintura y La Furia" (The Paint and the Fury)
11 July 2009 – 10 January 2010
Jorge Galindo opens in MUSAC La Pintura y la Furia (The Paint and the Fury), a veritable manifesto of painting as a craft and the painter’s position in today’s world
Exhibition Title: La Pintura y La Furia (The Paint and the Fury)
Artist: Jorge Galindo (Madrid, 1965)
Curator: Rafael Doctor
Coordinators: Kristine Guzmán, Luisa Fraile
Venue: Hall 3
Dates: 11 July 2009 – 10 January 2010
MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León) presents Madrid artist Jorge Galindo’s most recent body of work, La Pintura y la Furia (The Paint and the Fury). This exhibition, a veritable manifesto of painting as a craft and the painter’s position in today’s world, opens 11 July. MUSAC’s walls will be lined with the larger part of this painter’s most recent work, staged in such a way that the fury of the creative moment strikes the viewer with full force.
It is generally understood that painting is the most firmly rooted artistic genre in Spanish Art History; some of Spain’s most valued contributions to universal cultural heritage lie on canvas and stretcher, to such an extent that in Spain we often confuse Art History with the history of painting. A sweeping glance at our collection of monumental figures speaks for itself: El Greco, Ribera, Velázquez, Murillo, Zurbarán, Goya, Sorolla...; from the 20th Century: Picasso, Miró, Dalí, Tàpies and many others. We could even include Barceló, the most recently acclaimed contemporary master. We take it for granted that Spain is a land of painters and that our tradition springs from a sustained aesthetic introspection through pictorial language.
If asked to find an example in the art most recently produced in our contemporary context, Jorge Galindo is the artist that most clearly continues in that utopian investigation – that quest pursued by so many painters over the centuries, through their canvases. Galindo has revealed himself to be an utmost explorer of the pictorial universe. This lengthy process has taken him through diverse stages of painting; his resolve and ease are unprecedented. Be it his harshest gestural abstraction or gigantic figurative representation of the urban consumer society, this artist’s work is an honest head-on collision with the essence of the creative act; with the very act of painting. The human being, the tools, the image: this is the outline. In the creative act, he saturates all three elements with rage, valour, determination, shamelessness, arrogance, courage; all moving non-stop. Each painting takes on a life of its own, fruit of the confrontation between artist and elements. The result is an impossible equation where every piece previously belonged to some other assemblage.
The main grab in Jorge Galindo’s universe is without a doubt the stance he takes as a painter on today’s creative scene. His commitment has strengthened in the face of the difficulties encountered: the devaluation of painting as an artistic practice, coming from so-called modern positions in recent decades. In this context, the artist defends painting for painting’s sake. All else is an excuse. Textures, compositions, gestures, styles and images become entangled with no apparent rhyme or reason in the search for a completely autonomous end. This imperative has always been a given in his work.
La Pintura y la Furia: The Exhibition
La Pintura y la Furia is an experiment in the consequences of delivering this creative act directly to the viewer. The museum’s large halls will be completely lined with Galindo’s fury and a faithful recreation of the artist’s studio will bring the very act of creation to life in front of the viewer: the temple is also the god. In his enthusiasm, the artist fearlessly discloses his process. The whole scene smells of paint, we feel the presence of a person behind each image we behold.
The exhibition begins with three series of monochrome drawings. Each series contains 100 large-format drawings where all of Galindo’s creative tools converge on the paper. There is a red series, a black series and a green series. The layout of the huge sheets - placed in a row to form a wall – make it nearly impossible to see the individual drawings themselves, yet each one forms its own cosmos of pictorial resources and allusions to former works spanning the painter’s 20-year career. It all seems to be in a row, yet piled up at the same time. His love for typeface, collage, decorative motifs from the modern world, subtle nods at Art History, the raging creative gesture, are all part of this grand image factory where each item lends to the strength of the whole.
At the back of the main room, the drawings are again stacked, creating a wall that gives way to the series Jägermeister where the logo of this German brand of liquor is shot through with pictorial forms in a continuous construction and deconstruction of the image. The nod at serial imagery, so often used by Warhol and the pop artists, is clear. In this case the medium is paint. The brush stroke varies on each canvas and offers a more sincere and human approach to this obsessive view of an object. The onus here is on the painting, no technical reproductions or fancy tricks to diffuse its aura.
In the same main room there is a series of large vertical paintings that reproduce collages formerly made by Galindo. The huge iconic line-up displays another perverse twist on impossible interpretations. These paintings – each standing in its own right – are grouped here into a panel that harks back to the religious altarpiece constructions of antiquity where a true lineal narrative was never really present either, only a reiterative action toward the same end. In this case the end is the painting itself and the infinite universe of images that surround us, images the author eagerly appropriates. His offering of snippets in the form of collage provide an unexpected and impossible reading.
A small room at the side of the main hall boasts a huge collage that fills the entire space. It represents the horror of emptiness while reminding us that we have regularly ingested the products of media imagery for an entire century. Images ready to cut, paste and serve up! Millions and millions of images at our fingertips made into one enormous tapestry of interconnectedness, at the same time so individual.
The small collage room leads into the recreation of the artist’s studio. The focus is on one motif: a clown as the subject of the painter’s research in a great laboratory. This is where we feel the process of a painting, the inner creative workings of the painter, the sweat and effort of each pictorial adventure.
La Pintura y la Furia is Jorge Galindo’s statement, a manifestation of the grandeur of an ancient craft; romantic but absolutely radical. He displays an art form of continuous transformations where the painter struggles for coherence and a unique voice – a voice that echoes his own rage, his own obsession with reaping the fruits of an endless excavation into the canvas.
"La Pintura y La Furia" (The Paint and the Fury)
11 July 2009 – 10 January 2010
Jorge Galindo opens in MUSAC La Pintura y la Furia (The Paint and the Fury), a veritable manifesto of painting as a craft and the painter’s position in today’s world
Exhibition Title: La Pintura y La Furia (The Paint and the Fury)
Artist: Jorge Galindo (Madrid, 1965)
Curator: Rafael Doctor
Coordinators: Kristine Guzmán, Luisa Fraile
Venue: Hall 3
Dates: 11 July 2009 – 10 January 2010
MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León) presents Madrid artist Jorge Galindo’s most recent body of work, La Pintura y la Furia (The Paint and the Fury). This exhibition, a veritable manifesto of painting as a craft and the painter’s position in today’s world, opens 11 July. MUSAC’s walls will be lined with the larger part of this painter’s most recent work, staged in such a way that the fury of the creative moment strikes the viewer with full force.
It is generally understood that painting is the most firmly rooted artistic genre in Spanish Art History; some of Spain’s most valued contributions to universal cultural heritage lie on canvas and stretcher, to such an extent that in Spain we often confuse Art History with the history of painting. A sweeping glance at our collection of monumental figures speaks for itself: El Greco, Ribera, Velázquez, Murillo, Zurbarán, Goya, Sorolla...; from the 20th Century: Picasso, Miró, Dalí, Tàpies and many others. We could even include Barceló, the most recently acclaimed contemporary master. We take it for granted that Spain is a land of painters and that our tradition springs from a sustained aesthetic introspection through pictorial language.
If asked to find an example in the art most recently produced in our contemporary context, Jorge Galindo is the artist that most clearly continues in that utopian investigation – that quest pursued by so many painters over the centuries, through their canvases. Galindo has revealed himself to be an utmost explorer of the pictorial universe. This lengthy process has taken him through diverse stages of painting; his resolve and ease are unprecedented. Be it his harshest gestural abstraction or gigantic figurative representation of the urban consumer society, this artist’s work is an honest head-on collision with the essence of the creative act; with the very act of painting. The human being, the tools, the image: this is the outline. In the creative act, he saturates all three elements with rage, valour, determination, shamelessness, arrogance, courage; all moving non-stop. Each painting takes on a life of its own, fruit of the confrontation between artist and elements. The result is an impossible equation where every piece previously belonged to some other assemblage.
The main grab in Jorge Galindo’s universe is without a doubt the stance he takes as a painter on today’s creative scene. His commitment has strengthened in the face of the difficulties encountered: the devaluation of painting as an artistic practice, coming from so-called modern positions in recent decades. In this context, the artist defends painting for painting’s sake. All else is an excuse. Textures, compositions, gestures, styles and images become entangled with no apparent rhyme or reason in the search for a completely autonomous end. This imperative has always been a given in his work.
La Pintura y la Furia: The Exhibition
La Pintura y la Furia is an experiment in the consequences of delivering this creative act directly to the viewer. The museum’s large halls will be completely lined with Galindo’s fury and a faithful recreation of the artist’s studio will bring the very act of creation to life in front of the viewer: the temple is also the god. In his enthusiasm, the artist fearlessly discloses his process. The whole scene smells of paint, we feel the presence of a person behind each image we behold.
The exhibition begins with three series of monochrome drawings. Each series contains 100 large-format drawings where all of Galindo’s creative tools converge on the paper. There is a red series, a black series and a green series. The layout of the huge sheets - placed in a row to form a wall – make it nearly impossible to see the individual drawings themselves, yet each one forms its own cosmos of pictorial resources and allusions to former works spanning the painter’s 20-year career. It all seems to be in a row, yet piled up at the same time. His love for typeface, collage, decorative motifs from the modern world, subtle nods at Art History, the raging creative gesture, are all part of this grand image factory where each item lends to the strength of the whole.
At the back of the main room, the drawings are again stacked, creating a wall that gives way to the series Jägermeister where the logo of this German brand of liquor is shot through with pictorial forms in a continuous construction and deconstruction of the image. The nod at serial imagery, so often used by Warhol and the pop artists, is clear. In this case the medium is paint. The brush stroke varies on each canvas and offers a more sincere and human approach to this obsessive view of an object. The onus here is on the painting, no technical reproductions or fancy tricks to diffuse its aura.
In the same main room there is a series of large vertical paintings that reproduce collages formerly made by Galindo. The huge iconic line-up displays another perverse twist on impossible interpretations. These paintings – each standing in its own right – are grouped here into a panel that harks back to the religious altarpiece constructions of antiquity where a true lineal narrative was never really present either, only a reiterative action toward the same end. In this case the end is the painting itself and the infinite universe of images that surround us, images the author eagerly appropriates. His offering of snippets in the form of collage provide an unexpected and impossible reading.
A small room at the side of the main hall boasts a huge collage that fills the entire space. It represents the horror of emptiness while reminding us that we have regularly ingested the products of media imagery for an entire century. Images ready to cut, paste and serve up! Millions and millions of images at our fingertips made into one enormous tapestry of interconnectedness, at the same time so individual.
The small collage room leads into the recreation of the artist’s studio. The focus is on one motif: a clown as the subject of the painter’s research in a great laboratory. This is where we feel the process of a painting, the inner creative workings of the painter, the sweat and effort of each pictorial adventure.
La Pintura y la Furia is Jorge Galindo’s statement, a manifestation of the grandeur of an ancient craft; romantic but absolutely radical. He displays an art form of continuous transformations where the painter struggles for coherence and a unique voice – a voice that echoes his own rage, his own obsession with reaping the fruits of an endless excavation into the canvas.