Jorge Pardo

These pictures are taken in Art basel Hongkong 2018.

Galerie Gisela Capitain is pleased to announce its eighth exhibition with new works by Jorge Pardo.

Jorge Pardo’s work is distinguished by an interweaving of sculpture and painting, design and architecture, craftsmanship and computerized production. Experimenting with different display formats belongs to the core ideas of his artistic practice in the same way like focusing on questions of design and composition.

The wall objects that Pardo created for the exhibition at Galerie Gisela Capitain are hybrids between sculpture, painting, and objects. They visualize in a very characteristic way his discourse of painting. Pictures with intricately designed surfaces result from an interacting of various layers and levels. Shapes from computer-manipulated photographs of the artist’s everyday environment overlap and are ornamentally perforated and milled on wooden panels that are painted in various colors and mounted on Plexiglas. The snapshots that Pardo uses as the starting point for his compositions come from his personal collection of photographs but show traditional genres of painting such as landscapes, still life’s, or portraits.

Pardo brings light—an essential element of painting—directly into the picture by illuminating it from behind with LED lights, like a light box. The result is a visual and, in a way, iconographic game that has an elementary effect on the perception of the work. When the object’s light is turned on, the color changes as well as the patterns and subjects, which are made visible or invisible.

With his new works, Pardo addresses essential questions of painting, such as transparency and light in pictures. The theme of light as well as the artist’s interest in ornament are a central thread that runs throughout Pardo’s multilayered work in a variety of media as creative elements.

The same source material that Pardo uses for his large-scale, colorful works are once again abstracted using computer programs, but here they form ornamental, three-dimensional “drawings.” These consist of several grid-like overlapping layers of paper, each of which has been cut out with a laser and reveals a relief-like structure. Pardo deliberately restricts these works to gray tones to emphasize their drawing-like quality and presents them in deep Plexiglas frames that recall the illuminated painting boxes.

He describes the works on display as “paintings” or “drawings,” which makes clear that he does not think in terms of genre or learned categories, since even the three-dimensionality of the works contradicts the traditional definition of the genres of painting and drawing in the sense of a two-dimensional medium. Nonetheless, the works deal with painting, drawing, pictorial media, and form. This process of shifting attributions of meaning is an elementary part of Pardo’s discursive work. 

Pardo's work has always dealt with the intersection of sculpture, architecture and construction. Regarding his work, Pardo has stated "What I do is shape space and play with history that forms people's sense of expectation."^[2]

At one of his earliest shows, at Los Angeles gallery Thomas Solomon's Garage (1990), Pardo exhibited handyman tools he had reworked.^[2]

4166 Sea View Lane (1998)

In 1993, Pardo proposed that he would build his own house as part of an exhibition for LA MoCA,^[7] blurring the lines between art and function; "a house that is also a sculpture".^[8] The single story, bent C-shaped redwood structure was completed in 1998, when it opened to the public as a temporary satellite space to MoCA. The house is situated on a steep hillside in Mount Washington, Los Angeles. Structurally, the house is windowless toward Sea View Lane but offers semicircular views of a lush interior garden as well as a view of the Pacific Ocean, weather-permitting, from the dining room. Pardo designed every element in the building - the lamps, furniture, tiles and garden landscaping.^[9]

Project (2000-2001)

Pardo was commissioned to create an art work for the Dia Art Foundation at 548 W 22nd Street in Chelsea, New York in 2000. His resulting work, Project, functioned in three ways: to redesign the museum lobby, to create a substantial bookshop, and to propose an exhibition for the first-floor gallery, a traditional white cube space. The installation included wardrobe furniture for a patient's room by designer Alvar Aalto, side tables by designer Marcel Breuer, high stools by designer Jasper Morrison, and a full-scale model of a 1994 Volkswagen New Beetle. Pardo preferred to work incrementally, improvising with an agreed-upon framework as the project progressed. The exhibition brochure states: "Eschewing피하다/이츄/ finite edges, erasing borders both literal and metaphorical, Project problematizes the interface between art, architecture, and design."^[10]

Reyes House (2005)

In 2005, Pardo was commissioned to design a house for art collectors César and Mima Reyes in Naguabo, Puerto Rico. Fashioned after 4166 Sea View Lane, the house was designed to take advantage of the location by making the space open to the surrounding Caribbean views. Pardo incorporated concrete, bright orange metal screens, colorful tiling, and a kitchen collaboratively designed with the Reyes themselves. Reyes said of Pardo, "Jorge has an incredible sense of space. Some people have a perfect ear for music; he has perfect spatial intelligence."^[11]

Tecoh (2007)

Madrazo Tecoh Project saw Pardo renovate a ruined estate an hour out of Mérida, Mexico. The site was originally a farm and factory for manufacturing sisal twine, reaching its apex of productivity in the 1920s and '30s. The estate gradually went into disrepair in the postwar years, following the introduction of synthetic fibers.^[8] Pardo's refurbishment is founded on the history and aesthetic of the site, calling on local craftspeople for construction assistance. Like 4166 Sea View Lane, Pardo meticulously designed every aspect of the building's structure and interior elements. "Every element in Tecoh is laboriously thought over by being designed and redesigned, the formalism of the near-cubist angular surfaces further reinforcing not only the "irregular topography", but also the ongoing conversation so crucial to Pardo's work.".^[12] The catalogue for this project consisted of a book of photographs of the site, where Pardo superimposed glowing color fields.