Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Calcinaciones [Calcination]

Image caption
JORGE GALINDO DEL RÍO

Calcinaciones [Calcination]

  • 1990
  • Mixed technique on canvas
  • 150 x 200 cm
  • Cat. P_476
  • Acquired in 1991
By:
Beatriz Herráez

Jorge Galindo has been associated with painting since he first emerged as an artist on the exhibition circuit in the 1980s. Photo-montages, collages and the techniques used by cinema poster artists are also among his areas of interest in regard to visual art. His study of pictorial techniques and reflection on the language of painting and its historical problems (those concerning representation such as perspective and the creation of illusory spaces such as anamorphism and visual tricks), of authorship and copying and of the dialectic opposition between abstraction and figurative art are just some of the stand-out issues covered in his output.

Most of the works in the Banco de España Collection are from the early 1990s, when he was exploring the expressive and gestural potential of the medium. Many of them stand out for the use of paper perforated with Braille as a backing. This provocative gesture creates tension by making it impossible to read the pictures by touch. The same idea is found in works in which he uses towels and printed fabrics as backing materials (Patchwork, 1996-1998). More recently he has used paper money scrapped by the Banco de España (Money Painting, 2014).

As a 'joiner of images' who works always with humour and irony, Jorge Galindo builds up his works based on a set of images that can be defined as Baroque, and which is dotted with references to popular culture in the form of films, music and literature. 'Nowadays painting is an act of impertinence' he stated in a recent interview. To quote his own words, he engages in what he calls 'iconographic cannibalism' by appropriating images (postcards, magazines, posters) and putting them back into circulation as part of an excessive, critical universe that viewers must decode.

Beatriz Herráez

 
By:
Roberto Díaz
Jorge Galindo del Río
Madrid 1965

Jorge Galindo del Río began to attend the workshops of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid in 1987, and became a regular presence in art circles in the 1990s. His vitalist style is a reflection of his passion for pictorial art, in which he switches between the figurative and the abstract. Most of his works are large-format. He sees their surfaces as a complex conceptual space where there is a confluence of linguistic heterogeneities which are both autonomous and interconnected, based on collage and photo-montage. Plays on scale predominate in his compositions, alongside fragmentation and splits in a style that owes much to pop art and a sense of the surreal. His series Patchwork (1996-1998) mixes pictorial gestures with colour and figurative elements in the recycled materials that he uses as the backing for his works. His photo-montages take images from the mass media, mainly from the 1950s and 1960s, and create iconic juxtapositions of all kinds. He brings them together with a pictorial treatment sometimes provided by specialist film poster creators, displacing the consumer element of the images and their temporary nature and resignifying them in the present.

His first solo exhibition took place in 1989. Since then his works have been shown internationally at venues including the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 1999), the Ibero-American Museum of Contemporary art in Extremadura (Badajoz, 2000), the Culturgest Chiado 8 Arte Contemporánea (Lisbon, 2004), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla y León (León, 2009) and the Fine Arts Museum in Santander (2010). He has also taken part in numerous joint exhibitions at venues including the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid (1989 & 1992), the Hammer Museum of Art in Los Angeles, USA  (1999), the Patio Herreriano Museum in Valladolid (2006 & 2011), the José Guerrero Centre in Granada (2006), the Visual Arts Centre at the Helga de Alvear Foundation in Cáceres (2011, 2012, 2013 & 2016), the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (2013) and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. (2014) (along with Santiago Sierra). In 2017 he exhibited at the Lázaro Galdiano Museum as part of the third edition of the 'Reinterpretada' ['Reinterpreted'] project.

Roberto Díaz

 
«Accomplices of Contemporary Spanish Art» (Madrid, 2012).
Chus Gutiérrez Cómplices del arte español contemporáneo, Madrid, Fundación Canal, 2012. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.