In Jordi Alcaraz: defying boundaries, the artist furthers his explorations and near-obsessive ruminations on the limits of interior/exterior concepts, reality and evocation, presence versus absence, volume and void –the rational and the poetic. Even boundaries created by frames enclosing his paintings and drawings are altered in extraordinary ways, calling into question these distinctions. The same applies to his sculptures. Alcaraz opens surprising realms through the use of bending, tearing and puncturing materials in unpredictable ways. To quote the artist, The surface of the works have a plastic behavior similar to the surface of water… it can be traversed, altered, shocked…in which the absence is more important than the evidence; the absence of almost everything, the role of disappearance of the work, the permanence of the action.
Born in 1963 in Calella, near Barcelona, Alcaraz is logically placed among his Catalonian artist antecedents. However, he transcends the minimal spaces of Miro and the surreal other-worldly landscapes of Dali. And whereas Antoni Tapies created astounding walls and doors –marked and eroded– evidencing both the surreal and the real, Alcaraz extends those notions into realms uniquely his own. His work engages the viewer in unexpected ways. As the leading Spanish critic, Mariano Navarro, has observed: Alcaraz’s works alert us not only to our assessment of things visible and invisible and their paradoxes, but also allude to sensations we may have never experienced before yet seem familiar, as though they are part of our heritage…
Alcaraz’s works have been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Canada, Switzerland, and Spain in galleries and museums, and featured in international art fairs the in the U.S. and Europe.
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts 357 North La Brea Avenue. Los Angeles, CA 90036
http://www.jackrutbergfinearts.com
Image: Jordi Alcaraz. Exercise in disappearance, 2018, Painting, Book, Plexiglass, Wood