TASCHEN

Today we inaugurate WHITE / OPEN / NOT CLOSED at Doctor Fourquet, 3 (Madrid)

WHITE / OPEN / NOT CLOSED

 

Dates : September 28 - October 7, 2017

Opening : September 28, 7:00 p.m.

Location : OPEN THEREDOOM. Calle Doctor Fourquet, 3, Madrid

www.ddrartgallery.com

Participating Artists : DDR Art Gallery / David Heras Verde, Annita Klimt, Roberto López Martín, Evangelina Esparza, José A. Vallejo, Raúl Casassola and David Delgado Ruiz

Curated by Sara Zambrana & DDR ART GALLERY

White: “the beginning / the foundation / the seed / latent / the word on the tip of the tongue / unheard / inaudible / odd / pregnant / null / ageless / the one buried with open eyes / innocent / promiscuous / the word / nameless / speechless.” While these verses, written by Octavio Paz in 1966, bear no direct relation to what you are about to see and experience, they also condense the uniqueness of this exhibition: a sort of laboratory of ambitious ideas in which we collectively rethink white, or rather, whites, their nuances, their symbolism and myths, all the concepts they may generate. Here, we want you to approach the beginning, the blank page, the space without a center, freedom and light, the invitation to be and, of course, nothingness, from which everything must be born.

Open / Not Closed: formal and functional inspiration; DDR Art Gallery , the online contemporary art gallery, is always open. This is an exhibition for everyone, to discover and enjoy. It's a place for the eyes to be stripped back and darted, to say goodbye to their commitments or conventions and allow themselves to be carried along the path that art promises. That art that insists, that questions and questions, and sometimes answers, like Annita Klimt 's pieces, where subtlety is embellished and poeticized, and where every story can begin, as each person wishes, with a few words, with the right word, with an insistent cutout and an image that reclaims the heritage of classic French cinema. Something more than daydreams. Something more than sharing thoughts. This poetic character also appears in the work of Evangelina Esparza , in the emotions hidden in the furniture, in the drawer of the nightstand, where we often keep our most intimate things, what makes us vulnerable, perhaps, something as characteristic of white and light as purity or innocence, the memory of what has already been lived.

But poetry is free and art never stops trying to be so, hence it becomes the imposing work of David Heras Verde , reflections of a coming and going, of transience and not of destiny, where Duchamp's maxim is fulfilled: "A painting that does not make an impact is not worth it."

Nor is it worth obsessing over it if you don't accept it, handle it and, in the best of cases, transform it brilliantly as Jose A. Vallejo does.

His colorful, passionate dolls always have new stories to tell, new poses and accessories. They seem to never wear out, to never rest, because in reality, we are all playing at life. Roberto López Martín also talks to us about games with his avatars, Homo videns : toys distorted by the schizophrenic logic that guides and absorbs us, where the screen, the virtual, and solitude matter more than friends, real bikes, or imagination.

As McLuhan famously said, "the medium is the message." We all often want to escape from that suffocating logic, from our own narrow reality, and we seek refuge in fiction, as exemplified by the work of David Delgado Ruiz . Through his renowned documentary photography, he invites us into his fictional reality, invented from the truth, and leads us to his unsettling and inspiring terrain, but without really knowing where we are walking. This is a decontextualization of time and space, a deconstruction of the reality we observe. Are we walking through a utopia or a dystopia? Our gaze is the window through which we view time; our emotions are the ones that interpret that reality.

What remains to be discovered is Raúl Casassola , a renowned artist linked to urban art who presents beautiful and sensitive work: portraits in which precision, good framing or just the right shading are ultimately overcome by the facial expressions of the subjects, by the paint stains, the draftsman's essays or the visible support, spaces where matter becomes flesh.

His work is open, with an intentional appearance of being "half-finished"—or not—with its lashings of white; in short, and as with the rest of the pieces, this exhibition is completely open, to bring us together, and completely blank, so that we can all contribute our own visions and interpretations.

www.ddrartgallery.com