Online Viewing Room
ANTONIO BALLESTER MORENO
ONE DAY AFTER ANOTHER
April 23 – June 6, 2019
Christopher Grimes Projects is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of works by Antonio Ballester Moreno. This will be his first solo exhibition with the gallery and will feature a series of new paintings and paper collages.
Ballester Moreno is guided by instinct and uses the raw material of jute and acrylic paint within a palette of primary colors and foundational geometric shapes. The paintings refer to patterns and colors found in nature: yellow for light; blue to water; and the mixing of the two creates green, the color of vegetation; circles are cycles of the moon and sun; triangles are trees and mountains. All of these shapes are created through careful hand-eye coordination, resulting in subtle variances and a spontaneous quality of line. The title of the exhibition is reinforced through the repetition inherent in the making of each painting, which can be comprised of up to thirty layers of paint.
With attention to texture and figuration, Ballester Moreno applies up to thirty layers of thinned acrylic paint to raw, unprimed jute, essentially dyeing the surface of the canvas. Using this process he applies elements of a simplified, geometric visual language that cohesively represent nature. Through symbolic depictions of the sun, moon, water, mountains and light, Ballester Moreno’s paintings portray a natural world that is interdependent, integral and cyclical.
Antonio Ballester Moreno, Blue, 2016
acrylic on jute
78-3/4 x 62-1/4 inches (200 x 158 cm)
Through his application of simplistic and determined shapes and colors, Ballester Moreno has developed a personal vocabulary upon which he builds a world of subtle variances and symbolic compositions. And while ultimately rooted in abstraction, his work evokes the history of pattern and decoration, craft, tapestry design, and African, Islamic and Ottoman influences.
Bruno Moreschi • Antonio Ballester Moreno por [by] Danilo Macedo by Bienal de São Paulo
“Created in 1962, the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo is one of the most important international institutions of contemporary art promotion, and its impact on the development of Brazilian visual arts is notably recognized. The arts’ Bienal, its most important event, does not only present to different audiences the production of Brazilian and foreign artists, but it also attracts the world’s attention for contemporary art in our country.”
Antonio Ballester Moreno, Leaves (Pattern #1), 2016
paper collage, 17-1/4 x 13-3/8 x 1-3/4 inches (framed), (45.1 x 34 x 4.4 cm)
“The works of Antonio Ballester, point to a world of primary colors and childish forms where materials like unprocessed jute or clay yield an oeuvre of singular beauty, austere shapes representing planets and stars on color fields. His artistic practice is a convergence of various themes, including that of the education and learning that has enabled him to create a symbolic world where everything is connected.”
“I've always been very interested in that idea of the first line of combat, of resistance associated with the vanguard. Of going against the current. If you have to go out the door, well I go out the window. I think that is what you have to ask art.”
Antonio Ballester Moreno, Wave (detail), 2016, acrylic on jute
78-3/4 x 62-1/4 inches, (200 x 158 cm)
“I studied Fine Arts, but I tried not to pick up the brush throughout my career. I wanted to be modern and the painting didn't seem like it was. So when I started painting I did it without much prior knowledge. I liked that way of getting in there, completely 'unprejudiced' and 'illiterate'. That is a little what happens to the child: without academy, without learning, without knowing what he does ... but doing it. It is a way of understanding very healthy life, through perception. To be and to be. I started painting when I was awarded the MUSAC scholarship in 2006. Surprisingly, something that started from a rebellious attitude turned into something else. Everything started working. And today, when they ask me what I do, I say that I am a painter, but the truth is that what I do is work on the spaces.”
“All lives, without exception, are creative, and the purpose of every creation is not pure truth, or self-contained knowledge, but simply the improvement of existence. Because seeing things united, in their infinite diversity, is more enriching and satisfying.”
Antonio Ballester Moreno
ANTONIO BALLESTER MORENO
Ballester Moreno lives and works in Madrid, Spain and is considered one of the key figures in the young Spanish art scene. His work is currently on view in the 33rd São Paulo Bienal, where he is also an invited curator. His work is included in the monograph Vitamin P2 published by Phaidon (2012) and is in the collections of Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), Móstoles, Spain; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), León, Spain; the Olbricht Collection, Berlin, Germany; and Collection Reydan Weiss, Essen, Germany. Ballester Moreno has exhibited internationally at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain; Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Guadalajara, Mexico; Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany; and Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), Móstoles, Spain and is a recipient of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León’s (MUSAC) Artistic Creation Grant.
