Los Angeles, CA – Provocative recent works by Jordi Alcaraz, the celebrated contemporary artist from Spain, are presented in a major exhibition at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in Los Angeles. The current exhibition, Jordi Alcaraz: Altered States extends through December 21. A related video is available below.
This much anticipated museum-scale exhibition brings together large and small works which transcend the categories of painting, sculpture, and drawing as they blend all media, employing assemblage-like manner and installation. Conceptually, Alcaraz extends notions of perspective beyond the realms of the physically-seen.
Previously, Alcaraz’s first U.S. solo exhibition presented at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in 2010 was cited by critics as one of Southern California’s 10 best exhibitions of that year. The occasion also marked the publication of a comprehensive book, “Jordi Alcaraz Dibuixos,” with texts by the leading Spanish critic, Mariano Navarro, and the renowned American critic and scholar, Peter Selz, co-published with galleries in Germany, Italy and Spain, along with Jack Rutberg Fine Arts. Since that time, Alcaraz’s works continue to elicit international critical attention.
In this current exhibition, Jordi Alcaraz: Altered States, the artist furthers his explorations and nearobsessive ruminations on the limits of interior/exterior concepts, reality and evocation, presence versus absence, volume and void – the rational and the poetic. Even boundaries created by frames enclosing his paintings and drawings are altered in extraordinary ways, calling into question these distinctions. The same applies to his sculptures. Alcaraz opens surprising realms through the use of bending, tearing and puncturing materials in unpredictable ways. To quote the artist, “The surface of the works have a plastic behavior similar to the surface of water…it can be traversed, altered, shocked … in which the absence is more important than the evidence; the absence of almost everything, the role of disappearance of the work, the permanence of the action.”
When writing for a recent museum exhibition catalogue, the eminent critic, Peter Selz, wrote “Jordi Alcaraz takes the physical space, objects and ideas and projects them into new dimensions. He is a visual alchemist whose sensibilities expand a profound legacy … Alcaraz’s pieces have magic without resorting to tricks. It is art of the unexpected and surprise. This artist works with contradiction and enigmas … most of all, Alcaraz conflates the interior and exterior of matter and space, and works simultaneously with past and future.”
Born in 1963 in Calella, near Barcelona, Alcaraz is logically placed among his Catalonian artist antecedents. He transcends the minimal spaces of Miro and the surreal other-worldly landscapes of Dali, and whereas Antoni Tapies created astounding walls and doors – marked and eroded – evidencing both the surreal and the real, Alcaraz extends those notions into realms uniquely his own. His work engages the viewer in unexpected ways, as the leading Spanish critic, Mariano Navarro has observed: “Alcaraz’s works alert us not only to our assessment of things visible and invisible and their paradoxes, but also allude to sensations we may have never experienced before yet seem familiar, as though they are part of our heritage … ”
The trajectory of Alcaraz’s recognition has been particularly impressive in recent years. His works have been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Canada, Switzerland, and Spain in galleries and museums, and featured in international art fairs throughout the U.S. and Europe. Currently, his work is included in “Nuage” at the Musée Reattu de Arles, France. His works are represented by Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in Los Angeles.