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Site Project in the Chapel: July 10th / September 28 2003
Jorge Barbi (La Guardia, 1950) is one of the most personal, irreducible creators in Spain’s art scene. The work he has produced since the eighties is difficult to categorise into any group, trend or style among those which have characterised Spanish art in recent decades. Barbi works in conceptual and formal codes which approach the fragility of the limits between creation and knowledge, while adapting form and content, materials and ideas, with the utmost conciseness.
In his first significant solo exhibitions, at the Gamarra y Garrigues Gallery, he presented pieces related to the natural surroundings in which he lives, on the Galician coastline between La Guardia and Cabo Silleiro. Most notable was the use of the found object and his techniques of assembly. The use of the journey as a form of encounter allowed him to broaden the sources from which he could include new references in his work: city, desert, plateau. In the early nineties, he started along new lines of activity which drew to the core of his work a reflection on the artistic object, in which paradox appears as the most highly emphasised vehicle of expression. In his works involving text, he delves into the processes of perception and deciphering, focussing not as much on the absence of or lack of knowledge about codes as on the difficulty, or even the impossibility, of gaining sensorial access to the physical plane on which they are laid out. In Casa de juegos (House of Games, 1997), an intervention which took place at the CGAC, he created a stage of simulations in which the web of relations taking place between viewer, work and exhibition space was altered.
Within the space of the Museum’s chapel, Barbi performs a reflection on the ideas of origin and limit. He carries out a form of intervention in which the most subtle aspects hold fundamental importance in reminding us of the border around everything we are unable to know. The hypothesis that gives rise to the number serves as a metaphor and reveals a poetic moment in this space of indetermination, arousing a reflection of an artistic nature.
On the occasion of this exhibition, we have published a bilingual catalogue (in Spanish and English) with texts by Xosé Lois Gutiérrez, Olga Fernández and Víctor del Río, and images of Jorge Barbi’s work inside the Chapel.
The activities listed below will be taking place in Spanish only, with the exception of the Visitas Privadas (“Private Tours,”) which may be given in English or French, if a prior reservation is made.
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