Christopher Grimes Gallery

JOÃO LOURO

2006 PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

João Louro to exhibit at CHRISTOPHER GRIMES GALLERY.

Christopher Grimes Gallery is pleased to announce the first US exhibition of Joao Louro, one of Portugal's most important contemporary artists.

João Louro came into prominence in the Portuguese and international art scene in the 1990’s both through his solo work as well as through a series of collaborative endeavors. Louro has been experimenting first and foremost with ideas that relate to his two primary subjects: language and images. Louro's works can be loosely defined as following on the heels of 1970’s conceptual art endeavors or minimalist practices in the theatrical sense. However, he defines himself in opposition to them and his relationship to the finished object is one that goes beyond art historical references. He refuses to be confined to a single medium; taking ideas as a starting point he is at home using painting, sculpture, photography, drawing as well as film, selecting media as an director selects the musicians for his orchestra.

Following an intense blending of references from Warhol to the Situationists and from Kosuth to Wittgenstein, Louro has used and subverted dictionary definitions since the mid 1990s in a series entitled Historia do Crime (The History of Crime). Between 2001 and 2004, using words as a departure point, he created a series of very amusing large-scale neon and steel sign installations under the title Linguagem (Language). Working with traffic sign systems and blending cognoscenti references to art, art history, the history of philosophy as well as those of literature and poetry, Louro created a steel panel series under the loose title of Dead End. In that same period he also produced his Blind Images. In them he approaches the realm of the images (movies, newspapers, magazines) through painting. To do so Louro uses captions that refer to an obliterated, missing image that plays with the spectator’s capacity to reconstruct the image based on the text.

For his upcoming show at Christopher Grimes Gallery, Louro will present new works based on The History of Crime, Blind Image and the Phantomgraph series using the film as his subject matter.

João Louro’s work has been the subject of solo shows at important institutions such as the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art (MACS), Oporto, (2000), and Centro Cultural de Belem, (CCB) Lisbon (2004). He participated in numerous group shows in Portugal, France, Holland, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Brazil and the US. Among his most important recent participations are Insite 05, San Diego-Tijuana (2005), and The Experience of Art curated by Maria de Corral for the 51st Venice Biennial (2005).

For biographical information and a selection of additional images, please visit our website at www.cgrimes.com, or contact Christopher Grimes Gallery at 310.587.3373.

For biographical information and a selection of additional images please visit our website at www.cgrimes.com or contact CHRISTOPHER GRIMES GALLERY 310-587-3373.

2006 EXHIBITION

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