Pablo Alonso
25 Mar - 06 May 2006
PABLO ALONSO
Zur wahren Eintracht
Opening Saturday, March 25, 2006
Exhibition March 26 – May 6, 2006
We take pleasure in announcing Pablo Alonso’s second solo exhibition Zur wahren Eintracht at Galerie Jan Wentrup.
In 2004, the gallery opened with a monumental wall painting by Alonso, which placed current political and social events in the context of art and cultural history. At that time, with his large painting he posed the question of the narrative painting – which in contrast to historical painting also includes mythical and poetic themes – for contemporary image production.
In the new exhibition, Alonso questions the role of the image or picture in view of its religious charge and its veneration as a cult object. At the center of the exhibition is a monumental triumphal arch. Doris Mampe writes in the catalog to this exhibition:
With his latest installation sculpture, a monumental triumphal arch, Pablo Alonso tests the limits of Galerie Jan Wentrup. It almost seems to burst the gallery space and yet is too small to allow visitors to pass comfortably through the arched entrance. If they want to enter anyway, they need to bend their knees or bow down in order to participate in the work of art—in an enforced position of reverence. The squeezed-in beholder points not so much to the original use of the arch than involuntarily ironically to one of the themes of this exhibition: the complex relationship of the contemporary beholder and the cult with and around the image (Ab-Bild) in Western history. [...] []
Following the model clearly in the architectural design and structure, the artist designs an image, legible for everybody, which is like the “original” insofar as its reception takes place in a museum atmosphere, and it is venerated only as a work of art, no longer as a cult object. Both simulate their former significance, but in the course of their decontextualization they lost their reference to a real situation and thus their original purpose. [...]
Alonso turns to the counterpart of the simulacra, the “real image” (or icon) in his new single formats. The understanding of the “real image” as a copy of reality which one can and wants to believe in, leads directly to the field of religion and religious contemplation, which is the origin of Alonso’s works. In early Christianity, only “an image not made by a human hand” (acheiropoietoi) was accepted as a “real image”, which was only passed on in the form of an imprint, such as that of Saint Veronica’ sudarium (= vera iconica), guaranteed divine authenticity and thus was available for veneration. This idea of the true copy had a renewed renaissance with the invention of photography, since the mechanically produced image, not involving the human hand, apparently had been produced by themselves. Consequently photography became the symbol of scientific objectivity, perfect in its illusionism to sell to the beholder an alien reality as his or her own.
We would like to take this opportunity to inform you that Pablo Alonso also is also participating in the group exhibition Painting as Presence: This is not a love song at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (Marianneplatz 2) , which will open on Thursday, 23 March 2006, at 6 p.m.
The works from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Poland and Spain address issues around a de-romantisized staging of reality and an expanded notion of painting. Pablo Alonso’s contribution is a large wall painting that takes up the entire end of the choir in the chapel in studio 1.
Pablo Alonso was born in 1969 in Gijón, Spain. This year, Alonso has already participated in the exhibition Baroccos y Neobaroccos at the Museum DA2 Domus Artium in Salamanca, Spain.
Beginning in April, further works will be on show at the Arario Gallery in South Korea.
© Pablo Alonso, 2005
acrylic, oil pastel on canvas
230 x 160 cm
Zur wahren Eintracht
Opening Saturday, March 25, 2006
Exhibition March 26 – May 6, 2006
We take pleasure in announcing Pablo Alonso’s second solo exhibition Zur wahren Eintracht at Galerie Jan Wentrup.
In 2004, the gallery opened with a monumental wall painting by Alonso, which placed current political and social events in the context of art and cultural history. At that time, with his large painting he posed the question of the narrative painting – which in contrast to historical painting also includes mythical and poetic themes – for contemporary image production.
In the new exhibition, Alonso questions the role of the image or picture in view of its religious charge and its veneration as a cult object. At the center of the exhibition is a monumental triumphal arch. Doris Mampe writes in the catalog to this exhibition:
With his latest installation sculpture, a monumental triumphal arch, Pablo Alonso tests the limits of Galerie Jan Wentrup. It almost seems to burst the gallery space and yet is too small to allow visitors to pass comfortably through the arched entrance. If they want to enter anyway, they need to bend their knees or bow down in order to participate in the work of art—in an enforced position of reverence. The squeezed-in beholder points not so much to the original use of the arch than involuntarily ironically to one of the themes of this exhibition: the complex relationship of the contemporary beholder and the cult with and around the image (Ab-Bild) in Western history. [...] []
Following the model clearly in the architectural design and structure, the artist designs an image, legible for everybody, which is like the “original” insofar as its reception takes place in a museum atmosphere, and it is venerated only as a work of art, no longer as a cult object. Both simulate their former significance, but in the course of their decontextualization they lost their reference to a real situation and thus their original purpose. [...]
Alonso turns to the counterpart of the simulacra, the “real image” (or icon) in his new single formats. The understanding of the “real image” as a copy of reality which one can and wants to believe in, leads directly to the field of religion and religious contemplation, which is the origin of Alonso’s works. In early Christianity, only “an image not made by a human hand” (acheiropoietoi) was accepted as a “real image”, which was only passed on in the form of an imprint, such as that of Saint Veronica’ sudarium (= vera iconica), guaranteed divine authenticity and thus was available for veneration. This idea of the true copy had a renewed renaissance with the invention of photography, since the mechanically produced image, not involving the human hand, apparently had been produced by themselves. Consequently photography became the symbol of scientific objectivity, perfect in its illusionism to sell to the beholder an alien reality as his or her own.
We would like to take this opportunity to inform you that Pablo Alonso also is also participating in the group exhibition Painting as Presence: This is not a love song at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (Marianneplatz 2) , which will open on Thursday, 23 March 2006, at 6 p.m.
The works from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Poland and Spain address issues around a de-romantisized staging of reality and an expanded notion of painting. Pablo Alonso’s contribution is a large wall painting that takes up the entire end of the choir in the chapel in studio 1.
Pablo Alonso was born in 1969 in Gijón, Spain. This year, Alonso has already participated in the exhibition Baroccos y Neobaroccos at the Museum DA2 Domus Artium in Salamanca, Spain.
Beginning in April, further works will be on show at the Arario Gallery in South Korea.
© Pablo Alonso, 2005
acrylic, oil pastel on canvas
230 x 160 cm