Art Madrid'23 – JOSEP MARIA RIERA I ARAGÓ, GUEST ARTIST AT ART MADRID FAIR

 

The seabed and the sky, water and air, these are the territories that Riera i Aragó explores since his beginnings, to the controls of submarines and zeppelins, gadgets of almost magical nature that tell us about the totems of the twentieth century: the machines and their urgency. Faced with the frenzied rhythm of the last century, the artist stops the atmosphere thanks to his sculptures, bronzes and rusty iron that seem to float in an original element whose material we do not know.

 

 

Portrait of Josep Maria Riera i Arago

 

 

Josep María Riera i Aragó (Barcelona, ??1954) is the GUEST ARTIST at Art Madrid'17, which is held from 22 to 26 February at the Crystal Gallery of CentroCentro Cibeles, in Madrid's Art Week. As other artists, as Ouka Leele and Carmen Calvo, did in past editions, Riera i Aragó will be the author of the official poster of the fair whose image - one of his planes - will be transformed into a limited edition lithograph.

 

 

The expressive possibilities of his sculpture (weightlessness, floating masses), his dialogue with the urban scene and his plastic approach to this kind of "archeology of machinism", make the work of Riera i Aragó an essential piece to understand a generation of artists who, in the 80's of the past century, resumed in their own way the languages ??of painting and sculpture. Nature, whether as landscape to its suggestive sculptures or as ecologist inspiration/aspiration through the use of recovered materials, is another of its great themes and very present in its pieces of islands and in the series "protected species".

 

 

Work of the artist Jose Maria Riera i Arago

 

 

"If in other times artists had taken the landscape, mythological narratives or the human figure as themes of inspiration, Riera i Aragó opted for one of the most characteristic emblems of his time, the world of the machine and the artifacts in general. But it does not do so by a literal or mimetic realism, but by talking ironically about the machine, its transience, its capacity for suggestion, on a journey back and forth from real to imaginary space, which ultimately makes all these referents Be an immense excuse to make art "(Daniel Giralt Miracle)

 

 

The work of Riera i Aragó is present in important collections and museums around the world, among others: Musée de Céret, France; Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona, ??Spain; Musée d'art Modern de Luxembourg, Luxembourg; Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico D.F; Vincent van Gogh Fondation, Arles, France; Städtische Museen, Heilbronn, Germany; Museum Otani, Nishinomiya, Japan; MACBA, Barcelona, ??Spain; The Boeing Company, Chicago, USA; Collectie NOG Van Het. SNS Reaal Fonds, The Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Art Union Fenosa, La Coruña, Spain. Among the exhibitions held in recent years are the extensive retrospectives of three museums in France, the Musée d'art modern de Céret and the Musée de Collioure, as well as the Musée d'art Modern André Malraux, MuMa, Le Havr. He did also its large format sculptures for the Tournay-Solvay Park in Brussels, within the framework of the exhibition dedicated by the Folon Foundation. Riera i Aragó lives and works in Barcelona.

 

 

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.