Tag Archives: emergent artist

Pablo del Pozo

June 15, 7pm : visit with the artist

July 20, 7pm : visit with the artist in conversation with Gisela Chillida

 

 

Before today my body was useless.

Now it’s tearing at its square corners.

Anne Sexton, “The Kiss“, Love Poems

 

We are pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Pablo del Pozo at Galeria Joan Prats, entitled Mi boca florece como un corte [My mouth blooms like a cut], which includes tapestries and recent sculptures in different fabrics and sizes.

 

After his exhibition Cuando iba, iba con ella, y cuando volvía, me encontré con ella (2018) at the gallery with Aïda Andrés Rodrigálvarez – in which Pablo del Pozo used materials such as clay, plaster, pigments and recovered objects, to talk about the scarcity of the life as an everyday reality-, now the artist opts for a new line of research in which he adopts unprecedented themes and materials in his work.

 

The title of the exhibition belongs to the first verse from the poem “The Kiss” by the American writer Anne Sexton (1928-1974). The fortuitous find of this example of poetry, whose core revolves around the idea that wounds can also cause beauty, has become a catalyst to take Poetry -in capital letters- as a form of understanding, passion and creation, especially poetry written by women authors, among which the poets Anne Sexton, Emily Dickinson or Anne Carson stand out.

 

Pablo del Pozo presents in this exhibition a multidisciplinary project focused on the germination of life and the celebration of desire in a new nature, in a new habitat. It is a formal investigation, mainly sculptural, for which he used textile materials, from twine and jute fabric to lycra and wool, made with some traditional techniques, mainly crochet, and also others more moderns like hand tufting. The artist has created the works by hand, in a laborious process that has required a long time to produce them and which, at the same time, has allowed him to revalue what are considered “feminine labors”.

 

The works of Mi boca florece como un corte are characterized by their organic forms, which refer to organisms such as flowers, hanging plants, but also to viscera or moist bodies, and whose conception has drawn on branches such as botany and zoology. For the wool, fabric and rope sculptures, together with the tapestries, Pablo del Pozo has based himself on the microscopic wefts of plant and human cells, which he has tried to replicate through sewing patterns. In the case of the lycra pieces, the petals are transfigured into a texture reminiscent of shiny skin in a state of perspiration, a sheen that refers to costume fabric and party clothes, to the enjoyment of life. The structure of the flowers – the reproductive organs of plants that attract fauna to expand and colonize the territory – leads us to the idea of desire as one of the central points of the exhibition.

 

Based on these images, Pablo del Pozo creates a natural environment where he can offer a haven that brings death and life closer. And it is that, as the writer and editor Patricia Castro affirms, about the display, “The multiplicity of the alive attacks the certainties of a world paved where the flowers have to grow in the hard shoulder. Are prevented from sprouting. Plant, animal, men or women now don’t mean the same. The end is near, do you feel it? Embrace it. And don’t be scared of the unknown. Welcome back to the life.”

 

Pablo del Pozo (Badajoz, 1994) lives and works in Barcelona. He graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona (2017). He has been selected at the Valls Biennial, Guasch-Coranty Award (2017), or which he has been part of the exhibition at the Centre Tecla Sala in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat (2018). He has been part of the circuit of the Jeune Création Européenne Biennial (2017-9) with exhibitions in museums in various European cities: Montrouge, France (2017); Hjorring, Denmark; Cēsis, Latvia; Cluj, Romania (2018); Como, Italy; Figueres, Spain, and Amarante, Portugal (2019). He has also received the creation award from the Sala d’art Jove de la Generalitat de Catalunya (2017), and he exhibited in the group show in this space in June 2018. He has recently been nominated for the Miquel Casablancas Award (2019), his work has been exhibited at Fabra i Coats, and, in the solo show Al muerto, tiempo encima, curated by Jordi Garrido, at the Fundació Arranz Bravo in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat.

 

Video of the exhibition

 

Aïda Andrés Rodrigálvarez & Pablo del Pozo

JOAN PRATS warehouse, Passatge Saladrigas 5, Barcelona

By appointment at 932 160 284

Exhibition: 05/09/2018 – 26/10/2018

 

As part of artnou, Galeria Joan Prats presents the work of two young artists, Aïda Andrés Rodrigálvarez (Barcelona, 1985) and Pablo del Pozo (Badajoz, 1994).

 

Their works deal with the relationship that is established between the individual and the space surrounding, from an everyday point of view. The territory and nostalgia, the search for a refuge, the passage of time are important topics in their work, together with the environment. We will show installations of the two artists, that have been made from found objects and materials exposed to the elements.

 

Aïda Andrés Rodrigálvarez is interested in the impression that light, the environment and the passage of time is producing on paper. The techniques of lithography and pinhole photography allow her to work with a dilated temporality, as well as to investigate the color. In her artistic practice, paper and fabrics are left at the mercy of the elements, thus becoming photosensitive materials.

 

On the other hand, the works by Pablo del Pozo have a strong autobiographical character, linked to the experiences of the artist. The feeling of belonging to a place, displacement and nostalgia are subjects that concern him. From the characteristics of the materials used (clay, plaster, pigments and also found objects), he seeks to talk about the precariousness of life, thus generating a reflection on the daily reality.

 

 

 

Aïda Andrés Rodrigálvarez (Barcelona, 1985) lives and works in Barcelona. She owns a Master’s Degree in Artistic Productions and Research (2015-16) and a a Degree in Fine Arts (2014) from the University of Barcelona. She have also an Architecture Degree from the ETSAB, Barcelona (2010). She has individually exhibited at Fundació Arranz-Bravo at L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (2017), in the Acadèmia de Belles Arts de Sabadell (2016) and at Tinta Invisible, Barcelona, (2014). She has been granted by Institut Ramon Llull for the Jeune Création Européenne Biennale, has received the production grant Felicia Fuster (2018), Guasch-Coranty  (2016) and the prize Arranz-Bravo (2017).

 

Pablo del Pozo (Badajoz, 1994) lives and works in Barcelona. He owns a Degree in Fine Arts (2014) from the University of Barcelona (2017). He has individually exhibited at Centre Tecla Sala de L’Hospitalet de Llobregat), at Le Beffroi de Montrouge, París (2017) and at the Acadèmia de Belles Arts de Sabadell (2016). He has been selected to the Biennal de Valls, the Guasch-Coranty prize (2017) and to the Jeune Création Européenne Biennale (2017-8) with exhibitions in several European cities like Montrouge, France (2017); Hjørring, Denmark; Cēsis, Latvia; Cluj, Romania (2018); Como, Italy; Figueres and Amarante, Portugal (2019). He also has been granted by a production scholarship by the Sala d’art Jove de la Generalitat (2017), where he will show during June 2018.

 

Teresa Solar

 

Through ceramic sculptures, videos and photographs, the artist outlines a discontinuous narration, starting from her own body and linked to space exploration. Precisely, the works of the exhibition revolve around the relationship of the artist’s body with her work materials, essentially the ceramics. Through the performative link and the double meaning between subject and material, between structure and mass, Teresa Solar reflects on concepts such as control, resistance, a definitely precarious balance of sense and accident.

 

The title of the exhibition, Ground Control, has a double meaning. On one hand it is a direct reference to the material, ground or clay, and the pressure exerted on it when working on the potter’s wheel. The body of the artist adopts a position of resistance to control the material, which is plastic and dynamic, this effort makes the body operate as a static structure, as an object, as matter. Through the title, this minimal experience of communication and conflicting balance between subject and matter increases in scale, linking with space travel: “Ground Control” is the center of operations from which the operation of the flight of a spacecraft is monitored. Serving the two for the purpose of a successful expedition, one cannot exist without the other and vice versa, they are part of the same mechanism, a single subject divided into two bodies.

 

The idea of tense balance between oneself and the world is present in the videos of the exhibition. In Being a person you did not know you were, we see a puppet that adopts the role of the divided adult, of an unknown entity who is born in us and who looks at us from the outside, who turns us in foreigners inside our body. Continuing with the idea of the divided subject, in the video Ground control, the artist is transformed into the clay ball that turns on the potter’s wheel. The image of the turning body is accompanied with fragmented stories that connect the accident of the space shuttle Columbia, exploding into pieces due to a failure in its protective shield, with the personal injuries suffered by the artist herself.

 

This double relationship is also present in the sculptures of the series Crushed by pressure. The pressure of the metal bars and cords repeats the process of creation of the ceramics, remembering the pile of rubble of an accident, in which the ceramic becomes the body of the subject, controlled and stabilized through structures that deform it. Ceramics allow us to emphasize the contrast between the primitivism of a material and a millenary technique, with the technological sophistication of the ceramic skins that cover the rockets.

 

In the pieces Pie de foto: Masa and Chamber, Breath, the artist in the potter’s Wheel sign language on White clay balls, creating words that are then compacted and deformed by their own weight, forming a language that exists in the phisical space. In Pie de foto: Masa, ceramic columns hold the photograph of a bone while the engraved stretch marks themselves mean “mass”; the missing body is completed trough the text that supports it.

 

 

Teresa Solar Abboud (Madrid, 1985) lives and works in Madrid. She has been a resident and visiting professor at Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Stuttgart (2016), she was a finalist of the Rolex Mentorship Program (2016), she received the production grant Fundación Botín (2014), the production grant CAM (2011) and the prize Generaciones (2012). She has individually exhibited at La Panera Lleida (2016), Matadero Madrid (2014) & CA2M Móstoles (2012). Recently she has been selected as finalist for the Prize Cervezas Alhambra of Emergent Art during ARCOmadrid 2017. She will show soon at Haus der Kunst and at Kunstverein München.