Pablo Siquier (Buenos Aires, 1961) is one of the most renowned Argentinian artists to come out of the Eighties. His exhibition in the Palacio de Velázquez in Madrid brings together forty paintings along with various murals the artist has painted on the walls of the Palacio over a two-week period. Through the installation Siquier gives visibility to specific and personal experiences of his native city with a discourse that ranges from identifiable local architecture to pure abstractions that can be related to landscape, topography and the forms of representation of the city. By virtue of this exhibition Siquier reaffirms his experience of the city, not as an evocation or memory of the physical space and its construction, but as a result of the diverse political and cultural practices that unfurl and are inscribed within a determined parameter. He concentrates on the exploration of formal and constructive structures, on decorative motifs and abstract representations of the urban fabric, and on the exploration of the language of signs developed by the medium of design.
Siquier's paintings are formed from a neo-Baroque sensibility to reveal the ambiguity and semantic dissemination of contemporary artistic and cultural practices. His work, with strong formal attributes, rebuffs the rigour of order and reason to visualise a world defined by different interactions and diverse points of reference.
Siquier's early work from the second half of the Eighties reflects the opposition between the figurative and the abstract, a penchant for details and the artifice, the interplay between figure and ground, between order and formal precision, and the use of vibrant colours. His paintings later employ a more austere palette to reflect exclusively geometric forms, inspired by architectural motifs. From 1993 onwards, he drastically renounces colour and embarks on a series of black and white paintings, whilst also eradicating references to architectural ornaments in favour of more complex and articulated compositions. The paintings are pure and precise abstractions, with the interaction between light and shade exacerbated, transforming into a purely graphic surface where the organisation of space dismantles all rationality.
In his most recent work, Siquier leaves behind the canvas to work directly on the walls of galleries and museums; drawings and installations that operate with the illusion and real perception of space. Via computer generated drawings transferred onto gigantic printed surfaces, these installations appear to erase the borders between painting and the real world.
Exhibition´s details
Collection artworks included in the exhibition
