Art Madrid'23 – The work of works, of Juliao Sarmento

 

This is a great "work of works", a composite of independent parts, works from different places and times and that come together under the framework of the "gesture". The artist Juliao Sarmento has been entrusted with the task of selecting the works to approach the Spanish public to Portuguese art with works by Rui Chafes, Augusto Alves da Silva, Jorge Barradas, José de Almada Negreiros and Joaquim Rodrigo, among others.

 

 

Sarmento has only used its own perception as a glue, unifying element that make the works talk to each other, only their sensitivity explains the ties in this context. "Now they are like the organs of a body,  they can not live apart", comments the Portuguese artist, curator of the sample. Paintings, sculpture, projections, installations, bright, artistic expressions chosen with the unique pattern of freedom, "without looking at the source, or if he took ten here and three there," said Sarmento.

 

 

The exhibition is also an invitation to see with new eyes the international art of recent decades from some essential works of the three collections: Juan Muñoz, Sigmar Polke, Miroslaw Balka, Rodney Graham, Gerhard Richter, Robert Rauschenberg, Rita McBride, Robert Morris, Rachel Whiteread, Giuseppe Penone, Richard Serra, Robert Gober, Carl Andre, Aballí, Francis Alÿs or Philip Guston. And finally, it is an invitation to discover the world of Julião Sarmento, an artist ranging from conceptual art to abstraction, cinema super-8 to painting, with references to literature and film, looking for the progressive dispossession of arts, the search for essential forms.

 

 

 

"The weight of a gesture. Julião Sarmento's gaze to the Gulbenkian, MACBA and La Caixa collections" can be visited at CaixaForum Barcelona (Av. Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, 6-8) from February 11 to May 1, 2016.

 

 

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.