'In Gijón again'

The Aurora Vigil-Escalera Art Gallery presents, from September 25 to November 3, “Luis Gordillo. In Gijón again”, their third solo exhibition together after “Continuous Session” in 2017 and “Remembering” in 2014 at the Van Dyck Room. The artist, born in Seville in 1934, shows a selection of his most recent works in which he navigates between various artistic influences: Informalism, Pop-Art and Geometric Abstraction. His particular interpretation and perpetual renewal have made him one of the main visual artists in Spain, adored by critics, followed by generations of artists and studied by art historians. The exhibition opens with fifteen drawings of 29.7 x 21 cm made in 2020. This is an art form very close to Gordillo, in which we often see his most intimate and experimental self. Studying shapes and colors in all their visual potential and allowing himself to explore the infinite possibilities of each stroke. This is followed by six larger works, including three cardboards and a canvas of approximately 100 x 70 cm each, and two large paintings of 153 x 220 cm and 149 x 180.5 cm that dominate the exhibition space: “Alma de robot lírico” (2020) and “El psicoanálisis de Keop” (2015). This selection manifests the sense of humor inherent to the work and the artist’s personality, as well as his particular use of color and irony, in softened points guided by insinuating brushstrokes that are resolved in unusual forms. This freshness, so difficult to achieve in a space dominated by superpositions, juxtapositions, ruptures, patterns and imperfect symmetries, is only possible thanks to the mastery with which Luis Gordillo distributes each element. As if he were an architect, he builds each image with a torrent of contradictory figures and signals in a poetic, fluid and powerful space. A space that does not admit a single interpretation, no matter how much the human brain tries to find it within those icons that could represent organic forms or symbols full of meaning. However, the meaning of these works is only that which is gathered in the act of creating and in the act of observing.