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Galer�a Helga de Alvear: Jos Pedro Croft - Stationary Process - 15 Mar 2012 to 5 May 2012 Current Exhibition |
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Jos Pedro Croft
Sin ttulo, 2011 (detalle) |
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Jos Pedro Croft Stationary Process Galera Helga de Alvear March 15th 2012 May 5th 2012 Opening: Thursday March 15th 2012, 20:00. Jos Pedro Croft (Porto, 1957) continues in his relentless research on the fundamental concepts of contemporary art. Delving deeper into the main lines which have defined visual creation from Modernity to nowadays, the Portuguese artists continues with his tenacious purpose of exploring the limits of the possibilities that inform it. While his production is premised on the fundamentals of avant-garde art, in its ongoing search, Croft's work seems to be characterised by the tension created between two concepts which are sometimes opposed, and sometimes not. The most obvious opposition among these is the one that takes place between emptiness and filling up, a constant in his work, but other oppositions, such as those that take place between weight and density, or between space and mass, are also fundamental. It is through the prompting of these oppositions that the resulting tension takes the work of Croft a step further, to a higher level, to a new question, to one more answer. This is the aspect of his work that becomes most evident in the sculpture he presents in his new exhibition. Here, all these concepts are joined by an important newcomer: irony. The new series of works is informed by putting together (physically, directly) two bodies of an opposed nature: a wooden kitchen table which sustains an almost pure geometric object of iron and metal; a school desk with an added metal mesh and mirrors on top of it... The relationship between the two parts is one of tactile opposition, but one which is also historical or social. Furthermore, the artists positions them in what seems like a precarious balance, in a state in which, yet again, causes a tension in the viewer's gaze, as if they were about to collapse. In his new exhibition, Croft also presents a new series of large-scale drawings, a discipline of utmost importance throughout his career, which he has always paid great attention to. Using the proofs from his recent exhibition of prints in the gallery La Caja Negra (Madrid, 2010), Jos Pedro Croft started drawing parallel lines over the original drawings, focused on mass and color, in an almost maniac manner: zealously, one after another, they pursue and then overlap one another until they build up a practically infinite mesh. And such a deceivingly simple process allows him to shed light on notions such as depth, volume, rhythms, or to manifest the endless cognitive processes. When this process leads to new, this time wholly original creations, the mass of color disappears, and so does paper, in favour of intricate filigrees, meshes, which question both the spectator's gaze and the third dimension, as well as the very definition of what constitutes a drawing. Jos Pedro Croft represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale 1995, and at the as que So Paulo in 1987. His work has been shown at institutions such as the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon (1994), the Serralves Foundation in Porto (1997), or at the CGAC in Santiago de Compostela (2003). |
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