F. BANCAJA. Pl. Tetouan, 23
Gris. Gray is the color that spreads, sobri, for the new exhibition of the Bancaja Foundation dedicated to reviewing the career of one of the most important Valencian artists in Spanish art of the second half of the 20th century, Joan Cardells. Have you ever considered that the hideous uralite that covers part of the backyard could become art?? Cardells says yes, is the material that makes up abstract sculptures full of textures that are exhibited next to jackets made of sewn cardboard. He used to fill less noble materials in his pieces, like iron, the cardboard, fiber cement, the wax, cellulose fiber or graphite on paper. Despite that, sometimes he sought the nobility of marble, on which he draws with graphite, or bronze, reserved for special occasions, like the large mural he made for the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and which is now kept by Queen Sofia. It had never been exposed until now. The exhibition includes Cardells' solo production, as soon as 1976 will leave the Reality Team that he formed with Jorge Ballester. He left behind socially engaged critical realism and pop tendencies and wanted to return to the privacy of his studio to learn again the craft of drawing with graphite on paper. The official chronicles say that Cardells was a sculptor, but the curator of the exhibition Boye Llorens speaks of him as "a radical artist who draws in space". This great Cardells retrospective, which was inaugurated more than two years after his death, is the opportunity for (re)meet a thoughtful earth artist, intimate and austere who drew volumes and sculpted drawings. AU
