Where am I? Jung Suk Ryu. Organized by: Galerie Ulf Larsson (Cologne)
Castella Gallery brings together on this occasion in Galería Nueva four painters who approach reality from the four cardinal points. From May 17 to June 10, 2023 at C/ Doctor Fourquet 10, Madrid.
Artists: Fernando Biderbost, Paul Critchley, Josep Maria Galceran and Miguel Olivares.
Throughout history, painting has been an attempt to create a new reality within our world. From the wall paintings that simulated openings to a fictitious exterior and the attempts of perspective to fool our sense of sight to the new worlds that open up to us with the metaverse and NFTs. All the painting opens holes in the walls for us so that we can go through it and access other realities.
In this exhibition we find four very diverse ways of accessing those other realities suggested by Fernando Biderbost, Paul Critchley, Josep Maria Galceran and Miguel Olivares.
Critchley opens windows to the basement walls of the gallery, changing the perception of space-time and throwing us into settings that remind us of the Mediterranean coast or the Alps seen from afar. His mobile painting, because that is what we could call his windows and shutters, wants us to enjoy the simulation of a paradise, like those gardens that classical painters already recreated on the interior walls of Pompeian noble houses. Paul Critchley does not want to limit his painting to square or rectangular formats determined by tradition, rather he prefers that his limitations come from his idea and his vision.
Biderbost brings us closer to an abstraction full of atmosphere, a three-dimensional space that transcends the point, the line and the plane. Colors, shapes and lines float in space. The viewer, diving into a kind of cosmic soup, loses the notion of height, width and length. As Biderbost himself says, his painting does not seek to express sensations, but to produce them. “Painting is an artifice and a lie, just as any artistic action is, but the sensations and subjective perceptions that it can produce are real. This is the condition of the painting.”
Miguel Olivares takes us to a figuration full of iconic and critical content to a consumer society where brands occupy the entire color spectrum. Through a diversity of materials and techniques, Olivares cuts out and paints abstracted and self-absorbed characters, alienated by the aspirational desire for a status granted by the possession of objects and ways of living. The city is the landscape and natural environment of these characters who move without an apparent direction. His colorful wardrobe full of icons and shapes are the recreation of those attempts at happiness that never end.
Very other are the characters of Josep Maria Galceran, located in imaginary settings of a surprising lyric. The simplicity of the shapes enhance the stories and actions carried out by these figures. Its soft colors and gradients convey a stillness and calm that contrast with the reality that surrounds and overwhelms us. If Olivares represents and criticizes that overwhelmed society, Galceran helps us escape from it, taking us to places where we can enjoy life and image. His poetry, because that’s what we can also call his painting, confronts us with images that are conducive to contemplation and personal reflection.
These four painters, so apparently different from each other, open windows to our interior, to society, to art and to the world.
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