Galería Espacio Mínimo begins the season with the second solo show in its space by MARTÍ CORMAND, the Spanish artist based in New York. The title of the exhibition, The Yellow Wall, has its origin in the anecdote in which Marcel Proust narrates the episode of the death of the writer Bergotte, who dies while contemplating a barely visible detail in the famous painting View of Delft, by Vermeer: a yellow wall illuminated by the sun. Articles, philosophical essays, and books of poems have been written about that piece of yellow wall… The prominence of the anecdotal, apart from being a sign of our time, also contains other referents, such as the fragmentary nature of the works, the relationships between the arts, or art within art, among others.
In this exhibition, the artist reflects, from semiotic postulates, on questions related to the aesthetics of reception and the artistic experience in today’s society, such as the way of relating to the work of art. For the British art critic John Berger, the important thing is not to see, but how we see. According to Berger, decontextualization, the fragmentation of images, and their linking with other images causes a transformation that alters their original meanings. If previously it was the viewer who went after the images, currently it is the images that reach—or assail-—the viewer.
As in his previous appearance, MARTÍ CORMAND articulates the exhibition in two independent and complementary projects. The first part is an installation comprised of twenty-eight oil paintings of various sizes and has as its reference the recent exhibition of the artist Johannes Vermeer in Amsterdam, defined as the most successful exhibition in the history of the Rijksmuseum, with more than half a million visitors from 113 countries, who were able to observe the exhibition that brought together twenty-eight of Vermeer’s thirty-seven known paintings: a blockbuster, once-in-a-lifetime exhibition. As Cormand explains, his installation is a portrait of what surrounds the painter’s works in the Rijksmuseum, a peripheral view of the event based on images found on Google or provided by friends: people looking at Vermeer’s works, walls, curtains, corners of the space, frames, etc. Attending an exhibition today is not a linear, contemplative activity. It is the invasion of the ancillary that fragments, disperses, triggers the experience. In a flattened world, priorities disappear and prominence vanishes. What prevails is the spectacle and simplification imposed on us by the economy of language of social networks and streaming.
The second part of the exhibition brings together a set of oil paintings of different sizes sourced from artistic or decorative objects cataloged by museums: furniture, sculptures, paintings, ceramics, etc.. that interest the artist for various formal reasons. During the process of painting, the selected object can completely lose its original identity or maintain traces of it, establishing a tension between doing and undoing, or certainty and chance. If for Berger the appearance of photography means that the lens of the camera modifies the meaning of what we see, Cormand points out that there is also a point of view, or an ideology, in the ways museums and institutions select and display objects. Martí Cormand deconstructs and reconstructs the images to question these hierarchies and, in the process, generates an open-source story.
MARTÍ CORMAND (Barcelona, 1970), lives and works in New York. He had solo shows at institutions such us: Martí Cormand: Aldrich Emerging Artist Award Show, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2007) or the Arranz-Bravo Fundation, Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, SP (2010); like group shows we can highlight Twenty Twenty, comsariada por Richard Klein, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2020), DRAWING IN THE 21st CENTURY, Kunsthalle Galapagos, Brooklyn, NY (2012); Really?, comisariada por Beth Rudin DeWoody, Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2017); Walk the Distance and Slow Down: Selections from the Collection of JoAnn Gonzalez Hickey, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, CO (2017); False Documents and Other Illustrations, Portland Museum of Art, ME (2010-2011); The Fifth Genre: Considering the Contemporary Still Life, Galerie Lelong, New York (2010); Aclimations, Villa Arson, Nice (2006); 24 planes per second (with Piot Brehmer), 123 Watts Gallery, New York, NY (2000); Drawings from the Collection, Fundacion ICO, curated by Pablo Llorca, Madrid, ES (1999)… His works are represented, among other important collecitions at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas TX; The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art at Rollins College, Winter Park, FL; Caja Madrid, Madrid ES; Fundacio La Caixa, Barcelona, ES; Fundacio Vila Casas, Barcelona, ES; Progressive Corporation, Mayfield Village, OH; West Collection, Philadelphia, PA; Jorge Pérez Collection, Miami FL…
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: Blue jacket. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 30,4 x 30,4 x 1,9 cm
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: Blue jacket. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 30,4 x 30,4 x 1,9 cm
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: Blue curtain with velvet rope. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 30,4 x 22,8 cm
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: partial frame with shadow. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 35,5 x 27,9 cm
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: figure in white shirt. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 17,7 x 12,7 cm
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: figure in jeans. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 17,7 x 12,7 cm
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: open palm. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 35,5 x 27,9 cm
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: figure in white blue sweater. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 17,7 x 12,7 cm
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: figure with long hair. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 17,7 x 12,7 cm
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: purple curtain. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 30,4 x 22,8 cm
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: hand on velvet rope. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 25,4 x 20,3 cm
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: purple velvet rope. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 30,4 x 40,6 cm
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: green curtain. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 30,4 x 22,8 cm
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: white ermine moth. 2023. Arcilla pintada al óleo. 4 x 5,5 x 2 cm.
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: white ermine moth. 2023. Arcilla pintada al óleo. 4 x 5,5 x 2 cm.
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: white ermine moth. 2023. Arcilla pintada al óleo. 4 x 5,5 x 2 cm.
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: exhibition wall vinyl. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 40,4 x 50,8 cm.
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: yellow jacket 2. 2023. Óleo sobre lienzo. 50,8 x 40,46 cm c/u
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: yellow jacket 2. 2023. Óleo sobre lienzo. 50,8 x 40,46 cm c/u. Detail.
Martí Cormand .- Closer to Vermeer: yellow jacket 2. 2023. Óleo sobre lienzo. 50,8 x 40,46 cm c/u. Detail.
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Martí Cormand .- Wrapped chair 7. 2023. Óleo sobre lienzo. 50,8 x 40,4 cm
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand. Detalle de Wrapped chair 5, 2 y 1.
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Martí Cormand .- Taula 2. 2023. Óleo sobre lienzo. 61 x 45,7 cm
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Martí Cormand .- Partial chair 3. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 61 x 50,8 cm
Martí Cormand .- Partial chair 4. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 61 x 50,8 cm
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Martí Cormand .- New artifact 3. 2023. Óleo sobre lienzo. 70 x 56 cm
Martí Cormand .- New artifact 4. 2023. Óleo sobre lienzo. 70 x 56 cm
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Martí Cormand .- New artifact 10. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 40,4 x 30,4 cm
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Martí Cormand .- New artifact 12. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 50,8 x 40,4 cm
Martí Cormand .- New artifact 13. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 50,8 x 40,4 cm
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Vista de sala. Exposición La Pared Amarilla de Martí Cormand
Martí Cormand .- New artifact 6. 2023. Óleo sobre madera. 40,4 x 50,8 cm
