!["Jones [Basic document]", 1975. Mixed media. 40,5 x 64,5 cm.](/_files/exhibition/75/gallery_20/4f1dceeaca064a65d519e1d51ed2a3dd.jpeg)
!["Balans Café. London. Old Comptton Rd. [Basic document]", 1997. Mixed media on processed black and white photograph. 41 x 75 cm.](/_files/exhibition/75/gallery_22/43e4999059041b9c202659381b89c637.jpeg)
!["London [Basic document]", 1998. Mixed media on processed colour photograph. 53 x 68 cm.](/_files/exhibition/75/gallery_9/1552fe666a37f17a17a31fd164db6c5e.jpeg)
!["London [Basic document]", 1997. Colour processed photograph. 52 x 39,5 cm](/_files/exhibition/75/gallery_23/6cca87d247f995f71ba515963bae69da.jpeg)
!["London [Basic document]", 2000. Mixed media. 39 x 52 cm. "Tangible and intangible", 2021.](/_files/exhibition/75/gallery_25/9e7085987dacb09e842c378cd7b746e1.jpeg)
Tangible and Intangible, Darío Villalba
Darío Villalba
from June 5, 2021 to August 7, 2021
The opening of this solo exhibition, which presents works by the artist Darío Villalba, will take place on Saturday, June 5th, between 12.00 and 8.00 pm. The exhibition will take place within the framework of the Off Festival of PHotoEspaña 2021.
The tangibility of the intangible is the title of the
text that Don Francisco Calvo Serraller (1948-2018) wrote for Darío Villalba’s
(1939-2018) exhibition at Freijo Gallery, for PHotoEspaña's OFF Festival in
2014.
Seven years later, Freijo Gallery presents the second solo exhibition of
Darío Villalba, which brings together icons, which are fundamental images in
his work.
Accompanying these works with texts by Francisco Calvo Serraller is not
only a tribute; it is also a way of bringing together key aspects that are and
have been fundamental to the understanding of Darío Villalba's work.
Inseparable friends and accomplices in their creative work, they both decided
to part in the same year, 2018.
"[…] Art is also a strange mixture of matter and spirit, the real
and the ideal, mortality and immortality, the human and the divine, the
tangible and the intangible, because it is something made by hand, but
carrying in its core an ideal. [...] Without this spiritual and intangible
component, art would not be art, but mere craftsmanship, a mechanical
product instead of a singular work." [1]
In this exhibition we present works on various supports, in which
photographic images take on a presence decontextualised from their own reality.
Chrysalides, encapsulations, canvases, papers, photographs, basic documents...
coexist to give life to images that Darío made iconic, images of characters who
are no longer with us, but they have become faces, known to all of us who
approach Darío's work.
The intangible aspect is not always related to the pain and injustice of
unknown beings, which Darío manages to make protagonists; not always.
Sometimes, Darío takes as his theme images contained in works of art by other
authors - appropriations. Such is the case of Ingres' Madame Moitessier,
or Tamara de Lempicka's Adam and Eve, which are present in this
exhibition.
This journey, bringing us closer to the images that obsessed him,
accompanied by Calvo Serraller's texts, from today's perspective, with the
singularity of the present moment, helps us understand the ghosts and the
intangible nature of Darío Villalba.
[1] Francisco Calvo Serraller, “La tangibilidad de lo intangible”, Testigo Documental. El poder de la imagen en Darío Villalba, exh. cat., 2014. Freijo Gallery, Madrid, Spain, p. 12.
Francisco Calvo Serraller commenting on Darío Villalba's exhibition at the MNCARS (2007)