From September 21 to November 30, 2024
Pensar un arbre, pensar un paisatge. Individual exhibition by Regina Giménez at Pelaires Cabinet.
Pensar un arbre, pensar un paisatge [Thinking a Tree, Thinking a Landscape] follows in the wake of the last two exhibitions held simultaneously in Barcelona and Madrid in 2023, both entitled Más poético que pedagógico y practicable [More poetic than pedagogical and practicable], in which the central theme was a reflection on art education for children based on the figure of sculptor Ángel Ferrant and his pedagogical work in both cities. The so-called "Ferrant Plan", which banished copying and imitation to prioritise expressive freedom, intuition and formal experimentation instead, sparked quite a controversy and was described by his colleagues as "more poetic" than "pedagogical and practicable."
Pensar un arbre, pensar un paisatge features a series of paintings and collages based on manual workbooks that reduce artistic knowledge to a mere pastime. The shapes and pictures of the cards that must be cut out to complete predetermined, previously outlined landscapes are revealed to us as compositions with an expressive power worthy of the avant-garde and creative children's drawings. Constructions awaiting the interpreter who knows how to decipher them. Geometric and non-geometric shapes that create landscapes and also hint at the purpose of scientific drawing, which breaks down nature to show details that make the identification of what we know easier.
A visual map that refers to the idea of art as a game, as a hieroglyphic, a key tool for encrypting and deciphering messages. The drawing of an ordinary element turned into an extraordinary image, questioning established notions and allowing us to explore new territories without limits. Sketches and compositions of evocative ideas that understand drawing as a stimulus for our imagination.
Text by Regina Giménez
REGINA GIMÉNEZ (Barcelona, 1966) lives and works in Barcelona. She has been one of the most active Catalan artists on the national and international art scene since the 1990s.
Through the appropriation of elements taken from their original context, such as old blank maps or books on geography and cosmology, and their redesign into new compositions, Regina Giménez's works examine the aesthetic and formal aspect of graphic representations. An exploration that results in a world of incredibly beautiful and simple colours and geometric shapes through which universal dialogues on abstraction vs figuration, colour vs black and white or the whole vs fragments come into existence. Her versatile body of work includes items of different natures, from paintings on canvas and collages on paper to textile pieces, as well as other materials and techniques such as methacrylate or photography. It is precisely for this reason that, in addition to her pictorial production, it is also worth mentioning her interest in publishing artist's books and graphic work, as well as her teaching work at university level.
Her most recent solo exhibitions include Brillantes y pálidas. Gigantes y enanas (Galería Luis Adelantado, Valencia, 2021), Iremos al sol (Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid, 2020), El Sol i la taula (Can Palauet, Mataró, 2018) and Adoptar otra naturaleza (Ana Mas Projects, Barcelona, 2017). Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions held in public and private cultural spaces in Barcelona, Valencia, La Coruña, London, Switzerland, Argentina, France and Korea. She has recently published Geo-gráficos, her first illustrated book published by Zahori Books.
Her works are part of notable collections such as Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona (MACBA), Fundación "la Caixa", Fundación Banc Sabadell, Fundación Vila Casas, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León and Fondation Comprime (Paris), as well as private collections such as Lawrence B. Benenson (New York), Adriana Cisneros (New York and Miami), Jameston Group (New York and Atlanta) and Isabel Marant (Paris).
Biographical text: courtesy of the artist and Ana Mas Projects.
Galeria Pelaires has received a grant from the Consell de Mallorca and ICIB to realize this exhibition.
