In 2014, the Galeria Toni Tàpies will celebrate twenty years devoted to organising exhibition activities of the first order. Over the years, the gallery has achieved a strong presence on the Barcelona art scene, producing shows by internationally-recognised contemporary artists, from emerging young talents to firmly consolidated figures. In order to celebrate this twentieth anniversary, we have launched a season of one-off exhibitions that feature a series of outstanding works from our collection. These shows will focus on pieces whose artistic, technical or historic features make them particularly relevant or important, often generating subtle dialogues between works by different artists.
In the first event in this exhibition season, we will present a symbolic dialogue on love and hate. The two works featured, Susy Gómez’s Maldito Corazón (Damned Heart) and Jeff Brouws’ Trinity Site 8, compare and contrast these emotions in the most subtle ways, exploring such themes as sadness, pain and passion, destruction and creation, ugliness and beauty.
Now, this second exhibition will feature works on paper by the following artists: Susy Gómez, Alex Katz, Jaume Plensa, Tere Recarens, Jana Sterbak and Antoni Tàpies. The thematic threads running through this show are, firstly, drawing and, secondly, the presence of the human figure. Each practitioner approaches this theme from their own personal artistic vision, but in all cases what interests us particularly is their creative freedom and spontaneity when working on paper. For, although they are clearly artworks in themselves, contemporary drawings often have something of the sketch, study or project about them, and this gives the artist heightened expressive freedom. The human figure is a theme that has always been present in art; the body, the face, the gesture, have provided inspiration across the centuries, on many different supports, from drawing, painting and sculpture to video. In this show, then, we examine the way in which very different artists explore the theme on paper.
The drawings selected enable us to discover the artist’s more intimate practice. Some are sketches or preparatory pieces in which we can observe a process that later may lead to a painting, a sculpture or some other type of artwork. We can admire both simple portraits, made using quick, impulsive, direct and profound strokes, and drawings that portray the artist’s everyday world, the reality that surrounds them and provides them with the inspiration to embark on a new project.
