José Medina Galeote

JOSÉ MEDINA GALEOTE CALLED UP AT THE CAC MÁLAGA

The Malaga-based artist presents a site-specific project

The Contemporary Art Centre of Málaga is presenting Artista invisible dispara. This is a site-specific work by the Malaga-based artist José Medina Galeote that will turn the Centre’s Project Space into an artistic battle field in which visitors will be confronted with a 280 square-metre mural that will encourage them to reflect on the society in which we live and to discover new experiences. It presents Medina Galeote as a sharp-shooter or soldier, positioned in the trenches of art into which the Centre’s walls have been converted and lying in wait for the viewer or enemy that he is stalking. Thousands of red, black and green lines created by the artist with a felt-tip pen as his only weapon create an interplay of volumes in which tanks, control towers and fighter jets challenge the visitor and offer the artist a unique support for a reflection on the act of painting.

11 February to 3 April 2011

Since its foundation, the CAC Málaga has focused on art by local artists as one of its institutional strategies. As a result, a large number of emerging artists, particularly from Andalusia, have had the opportunity to exhibit their work in an art centre. They include David Delfín, Javier Calleja, Simon Zabell and Libia Castro & Olafur Olafsson.

With Artista invisible dispara, to be seen in the Project Space, José Medina Galeote (born 1970, lives and works in Antequera) is presenting an installation that reveals his commitment to artistic creation and through which he investigates supports, materials and techniques characteristic of painting.

Although he is a multi-disciplinary artist who has also worked in video and sculpture, José Medina Galeote is primarily a painter. Through this medium and its conceptual derivations he investigates the complexity inherent to the act of painting and also questions events and the roles established by the society in which we live.

Camouflage is the guiding thread in his work of the last decade. Artista invisible dispara reveals the best of Medina Galeote. It is a work charged with tension and defiance, located within the context of war and characterised by its intent to reflect on the uncertainty, belligerence and disenchantment that mark contemporary life. The thick lines of his felt-tip pens, which seem to be cannons loaded with black, red and green ink, cover 280 square metres of wall with wavy and zigzagging lines that suggest a map. Shapes and volumes appear before the viewer’s eyes through the technique of dazzle painting, with the vigorously expressive lines creating a psychedelic and Cubist game.

For Fernando Francés, Director of the CAC Málaga: “The work of José Medina Galeote, located midway between abstraction and figuration, conceals a message involving high levels of violence behind its apparently childlike and innocent façade. In the manner of a visual agility test, Medina Galeote encourages the discovery of new experiences and opposing sensations. In this new work at the CAC Málaga the line of his felt-tip pens makes the volumes of the walls disappear, while the figures emerge from the background to create volume and depth and thus reveal military tanks, bombings, control towers, trenches, and more. The result is a metaphor for the hostility that prevails in contemporary society, in which the artist assumes the role of sharp-shooter lying in wait for the viewer looking at his work.”

Artista invisible dispara represents the combat between creator and space and the challenge of confronting a huge blank wall on which the artist leaves his mark with felt-tip pens as his only weapon.

Medina Galeote is also represented in Apocalypse, the current display of works from the CAC Málaga’s permanent collection, with Landscape 23 of 2009. Alongside it, creations by internationally renowned artists including Rebecca Horn, Santiago Sierra, Louise Bourgeois and Anselm Kiefer offer a reflection on the idea of crisis, suffering, war and desperation. Taken as a whole, this presentation of the collection is a statement of intent that reveals the art world’s ongoing commitment to social and political problems.