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

Collection

Inventario (mares) [Inventory (seas)]

Image caption
IGNASI ABALLÍ

Inventario (mares) [Inventory (seas)]

  • 2013
  • Digital print on paper
  • 150,3 x 105,5 x 5 cm
  • Edition Única
  • Cat. F_158
  • Acquired in 2013
By:
Frederic Montornés

Since the 1990s, Aballí has embraced a pictorial technique based on the idea that painting has run its course. He has reached beyond its boundaries in order to question the meaning of painting, relate to its language in a different way and foster representation through negation. He refers to things through their absence, where the aim is for viewers to fill in the gaps left by the works with their own experiences.That decision alludes to the complexity of the everyday, as well as to the quantity and variety of nuances involved.

As a lover of work produced without touching, by means of an autonomous process or through neglect, Ignasi Aballí is driven to continue on the path of inaction by his refusal to be productive, along with a desire to question the oversaturation of images, pursue the act of wasting time, reflect on restraint, resist-without-doing-anything and put forward contradiction as a starting point. In other words, doing without doing, making films without filming, photographs without a camera and pictures without painting.

As a result of his passion for collecting and classifying everything which characterises and gives meaning to our life, Aballí came up with Errors (Errors-I) (2001), a series of proposals that produce a work from the errors committed during the creative process and which often end up in the bin. The Banco de España also has two works belonging to the Disappearances project (2002), a set of sixteen film posters and a screening designed for an exhibition at the Reina Sofía. The starting point is the work of Georges Perec. Aballí adopts the usual resources of the French author and filmmaker, such as the obsession with order, the creation of archive criteria and establishing categories to itemise everyday activities. Inventory (seas) (2013), which uses photographs of the seas published in the El País newspaper between November 2012 and November 2013, and the Pantone mix Biographies (2001), which has colours named after the artists who created them, are in that same vein.

Frederic Montornés

 
By:
Roberto Díaz
Ignasi Aballí
Barcelona 1958

Ignasi Aballí studied Fine Arts at Barcelona University. At the end of the 1980s, he started to produce conceptual works using non-intervention strategies as regards his materials in order to question traditional art notions. The contingent and time components thus become decisive aspects of the result of the work, in a distancing that counterbalances the artist’s subjectivity and the manual component. He applies a highly controlled methodology and prior conditions that must not be altered. Aballí also uses linguistic concepts, mainly in relation to paintings, to create tensions between their elements and the classification terms and systems defining them. Another fundamental aspect of his work is his questioning of the mechanisms to depict the everyday used by the mass media by means of compiling, accumulating, classifying and serial presentation of photographs and press headlines. He then decontextualises them and turns them into abstract references, resulting in a distancing from the real and forcing the viewer to consider the complexity of the everyday and the range of nuances involved.

Aballí has taken part in international events such as the Sydney Biennale (1998) and the Venice Biennale (2007). His solo shows have been held at the Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2002 and 2015); the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2005); the Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, United Kingdom, 2006); the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (Karlsruhe, Germany, 2006); the Today Art Museum (Beijing, 2009); the Pinacoteca do Estado (São Paulo, 2010) and Atrium Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country (2012).

Roberto Díaz

 
 
Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.