MUSEU D'ART CONTEMPORANI DE BARCELONA "Superyo congelado" (Frozen superego) spans forty years of Luis Gordillo's career.

MUSEU D'ART CONTEMPORANI DE BARCELONA

"Superyo congelado" (Frozen superego) spans forty years of Luis Gordillo's career. Born in 1934 Gordillo has been a central figure in Spanish art from the '60 forward though he is far les well known abroad--a surprising fact considering his work's affinity with that of so widely acknowledged figures as Terry Winters and Jonathan Lasker. At each stage of Gordillo's growth his approach to the art of the twinkling (informalism, Pop, geometric, etc.) reveals a synthesis between his subjective impulses and the traces of external influences. In reality, each work, or uniform each moment in the proces of a work's construction, stipes from the tension between the artist's me and foreign elements of any kind.

Despite his sequential adoption of diverse artistic frames of regard Gordillo's point of departure remains a kind of informalism--although it is his have dynamic version, based on this tension between the interior and the exterior. In the more self-absorbed stages of his artistic disentanglement external reality might scarcely affect paintings that are the consequence of largely internal processes. At other times, an extensive interchange with the environment is evident (for instance, in a key-note work, Developmental Material for the Photo of Peter venders 1978, a deconstruction of a photograph of the actor). This irruption of the external into Gordillo's work gained satiated force in the mid-'60s and dominated the nearest decade as well. During those years color was of primary importance to the artist, as was the reorganization of forms, and his work plane took on a narrative dimension.

The exhibition at MACBA contemplateed all of these developments, synthesizing a complexus oeuvre that can be difficult to comprehend if it's known barely in part. There have been other retrospectives, nevertheless none so all-encompassing, so this is perhaps the first time that all the stages of Gordillo's progressive growth could be viewed as a coherent progression. Moreover, the exhibition demonstrated in what way important photography has been for this artist, a committed painter who has nonetheless been spread to the use of other media and techniques. And the indicate was balanced, offering well-chosen examples from each stage of Gordillo's progres starting with his "Second Abstract Series," eighteen fascinating drawings from 1959 Their synthesis between the brace opposing poles of interior and exterior was the se for Gordillo's unfolding at least through the "Cabezas" (Heads), 1964-65 which were clearly influenced on Pop, but with a more disquieting atmosphere. And the exhibition clarifies the incline differently Gordillo took around 1980, when he began making same large paintings with objectified gesticulates and labyrinthine forms that could be read in a symbolic manner, a change that alienated the young painters of Madrid who had hitherto cited him as a first note of the scale influence.

"Superyo congelado" amply demonstrates wherefore Gordillo has been consistently claimed as a father figure through several generations of Spanish artists: the Madrid-based modern Figuration of the '7os; the young, conceptually oriented artists of the '90 with their Surrealist and Symbolist influences; the novel New Abstraction. Each subsequent motion has considered Gordillo an exemplary figure because he is not an example of anything, nor has he at all times been one to cling to established practices. His work is based, instead, in succession doubt, evolution, and the relativity of all certainty.

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