RICARDO BREY / Gasoline Around the Moon
26 May - 30 Jun 2013
Ricardo Brey, Gasoline Around the Moon, Galerie Tatjana Pieters, Ghent (BE), 2013 / Courtesy Ricardo Brey & Galerie Tatjana Pieters / Photography by We Document Art
Ricardo Brey, Gasoline Around the Moon, Galerie Tatjana Pieters, Ghent (BE), 2013 / Courtesy Ricardo Brey & Galerie Tatjana Pieters / Photography by We Document Art
Ricardo Brey, Gasoline Around the Moon, Galerie Tatjana Pieters, Ghent (BE), 2013 / Courtesy Ricardo Brey & Galerie Tatjana Pieters / Photography by We Document Art
Ricardo Brey, Gasoline Around the Moon, Galerie Tatjana Pieters, Ghent (BE), 2013 / Courtesy Ricardo Brey & Galerie Tatjana Pieters / Photography by We Document Art
Ricardo Brey, Gasoline Around the Moon, Galerie Tatjana Pieters, Ghent (BE), 2013 / Courtesy Ricardo Brey & Galerie Tatjana Pieters / Photography by We Document Art
We have the honour to host the first solo exhibition at our gallery of internationally renown artist Ricardo Brey (1955, CU), marking the start of a longterm collaboration between the artist and Galerie Tatjana Pieters as his Belgian representative. ‘Gasoline Around the Moon’ concerns the first major exposure of his work in Belgium since his monumental project ‘Universe’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art S.M.A.K. Ghent in 2006. ‘Universe’ was a large scale installation of 1004 drawings unfolded within 99 glass vitrines, making the lecture of the drawings transparent. The next chapter in Brey’s work does the opposite. The exhibition presents an installation of black boxes that when opened reveal a highly personal and multidisciplinary universe, inviting the viewer to engage and discover.
Brey has been committing himself to the development of large projects since 2002. After ‘Universe’ (2002-2003), he continued with the extended project ‘Annex’ (2003-2009), followed by ‘Every Life Is a Fire’ in 2009. Here the artist began an amazing journey creating multidisciplinary works inside unfoldable archival boxes of the same size. Offering the beholder a look into the miniature, Brey meticulously transforms the boxes into spaces of wonder. Each with their individual title, they reflect an autonomous world. The five boxes on show are the last ones of the project, but the first ever to be exhibited in public.
The transformative power of the universe is also reflected within ‘Parallel Universe’ (2009), a floor sculpture existing of a horizontal line of dices. It is a contraposition to the ‘Universe’ installation presented at SMAK, which was accompanied by a sculpture presenting a vertical line of dices (Universe, 2001). At once, the subsequent movements are reversed. The horizontal movement of the transparent and wide drawing installation in relation to the verticality of the dice-sculpture, has continued into an internal reading of the boxes in relation to the horizontality of ‘Parallel Universe’. It references the spiritual and psychological reflection on changing realities, poetically described by Brey as ‘The Astronomy of the Spirit’ (cf. artist statement in attachment).
‘Origami’ (2013), a series of three wall based assemblages in white frames, mirror the boxes on the wall by translating the introspective reading of the boxes into an extroverted counterpart. The playful and free use of materials reminds us of a game with form, implying the possibility of folding in a physical, but also in a metaforical sense. The materials bow to a will, reflecting the physical and mental freedom achieved in the boxes.
The referential cycle of works presented
in this exhibition is closed with ‘Oxidation’, a series of black & white drawings of graphite & iron oxid presented in metal frames. They represent an answer to a certain drawing crisis, in which the artist wanted to take drawing as a medium to its limit, discovering the almost alchemical power of the materials becoming signs in the paper. Produced in 2009, they were the starting point of ‘Every Life is a Fire’.
As an alchemist Ricardo Brey creates his own world view with remnants of a consumer society, succeeding in visually expressing the unspoken, mutual solidarity of what the artist defines as the ‘Universe’. Through his imagination, he is able to develop a stimulating world based on combining his materials and creative intervention. The artistic results are fascinating world views where man is not at the center of the world, but functions as a mere link in an incomprehensible evolving chain of processes.
Ricardo Brey lives & works in Ghent since 1991. He graduated from the School of Arts San Alejandro and the National School of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba. His work has been shown in several group exhibitions, like Documenta IX, cur. Jan Hoet, Kassel (DE), 1992, the Biennials of Havana (CU) & Sao Paulo (BR), Trattenendosie, Biennial of Venice (IT),1999, Frames & Documents: Conceptual Practices, selection from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, Miami (USA), 2011. Brey’s solo exhibitions include: Ricardo Brey. Hanging around, GEM, The Hague (2004/2005), Universe, S.M.A.K, Ghent (2006/2007), and Ricardo Brey /Jimmie Durham : looking at my own work (and his), Christine König Galerie, Vienna in 2012.
In 1998 he received the annual prize for Visual Arts by the Ministry of Culture of the Flemish Community and a Guggenheim Fellowship for Installation Art & Sculpture.
In June Brey will be taking part in the group exhibition ‘Collective Fictions’, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (FR). In 2014 he will have a retrospective at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Havana (CU).
Brey has been committing himself to the development of large projects since 2002. After ‘Universe’ (2002-2003), he continued with the extended project ‘Annex’ (2003-2009), followed by ‘Every Life Is a Fire’ in 2009. Here the artist began an amazing journey creating multidisciplinary works inside unfoldable archival boxes of the same size. Offering the beholder a look into the miniature, Brey meticulously transforms the boxes into spaces of wonder. Each with their individual title, they reflect an autonomous world. The five boxes on show are the last ones of the project, but the first ever to be exhibited in public.
The transformative power of the universe is also reflected within ‘Parallel Universe’ (2009), a floor sculpture existing of a horizontal line of dices. It is a contraposition to the ‘Universe’ installation presented at SMAK, which was accompanied by a sculpture presenting a vertical line of dices (Universe, 2001). At once, the subsequent movements are reversed. The horizontal movement of the transparent and wide drawing installation in relation to the verticality of the dice-sculpture, has continued into an internal reading of the boxes in relation to the horizontality of ‘Parallel Universe’. It references the spiritual and psychological reflection on changing realities, poetically described by Brey as ‘The Astronomy of the Spirit’ (cf. artist statement in attachment).
‘Origami’ (2013), a series of three wall based assemblages in white frames, mirror the boxes on the wall by translating the introspective reading of the boxes into an extroverted counterpart. The playful and free use of materials reminds us of a game with form, implying the possibility of folding in a physical, but also in a metaforical sense. The materials bow to a will, reflecting the physical and mental freedom achieved in the boxes.
The referential cycle of works presented
in this exhibition is closed with ‘Oxidation’, a series of black & white drawings of graphite & iron oxid presented in metal frames. They represent an answer to a certain drawing crisis, in which the artist wanted to take drawing as a medium to its limit, discovering the almost alchemical power of the materials becoming signs in the paper. Produced in 2009, they were the starting point of ‘Every Life is a Fire’.
As an alchemist Ricardo Brey creates his own world view with remnants of a consumer society, succeeding in visually expressing the unspoken, mutual solidarity of what the artist defines as the ‘Universe’. Through his imagination, he is able to develop a stimulating world based on combining his materials and creative intervention. The artistic results are fascinating world views where man is not at the center of the world, but functions as a mere link in an incomprehensible evolving chain of processes.
Ricardo Brey lives & works in Ghent since 1991. He graduated from the School of Arts San Alejandro and the National School of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba. His work has been shown in several group exhibitions, like Documenta IX, cur. Jan Hoet, Kassel (DE), 1992, the Biennials of Havana (CU) & Sao Paulo (BR), Trattenendosie, Biennial of Venice (IT),1999, Frames & Documents: Conceptual Practices, selection from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, Miami (USA), 2011. Brey’s solo exhibitions include: Ricardo Brey. Hanging around, GEM, The Hague (2004/2005), Universe, S.M.A.K, Ghent (2006/2007), and Ricardo Brey /Jimmie Durham : looking at my own work (and his), Christine König Galerie, Vienna in 2012.
In 1998 he received the annual prize for Visual Arts by the Ministry of Culture of the Flemish Community and a Guggenheim Fellowship for Installation Art & Sculpture.
In June Brey will be taking part in the group exhibition ‘Collective Fictions’, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (FR). In 2014 he will have a retrospective at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Havana (CU).