Agusti Puig: Between Myth and Matter

$40

AGU

STÍ P

UIG

: Betw

een Myth and M

atter FRAN

KL

IN B

OW

LE

S GAL

LE

RIE

S

AGUSTÍ PUIG: Between Myth and Matter

NEW YORK431 West BroadwayNew York NY 10012

212.226.1616 / 800.926.9537

SAN FRANCISCO765 Beach Street

San Francisco CA 94109349 Geary Street

San Francisco CA 94102415.441.8008 / 800.926.9535

www.franklinbowlesgallery.com

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FRANKLIN BOWLES GALLERIESSan Francisco – New York


FBG-2015 Puig 01-60-re.indd 1FBG-2015 Puig 01-60-re.indd 1 15. 8. 24. 오후 3:2015. 8. 24. 오후 3:20


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Agustí Puig is without doubt a Catalan artist, embodying that region’s restless, inventive energy and philo-sophical questioning. While Catalonia’s rich cultural history reaches back to ancient times, its capital Barce-lona has been regarded, since the end of the nineteenth-century, as a nexus of avant-garde activity. Puig is at home here—literally and fi guratively, an heir apparent to its most renowned and radical modernist artists: Joan Miró, Antoni Tàpies, and Pablo Picasso; not to mention the Catalan masters of other mediums: architect Antoni Gaudi; poet Salvador Espiru, and musician and composer Pablo Casals. Barcelona still resounds with the chorus of their voices. Puig has listened to all of them, and boldly found his own. Among contemporary artists today, his work offers a remarkable unity of thought and form, a powerful and intimate fusion of poetic and material elements.

Over the last twenty-fi ve years, Agustí Puig has gained international prominence, exhibiting widely not only throughout Spain, but in Europe, the United States, Taiwan and Japan. His paintings, sculptures, and works on paper are increasingly sought after by collectors and museums. He is particularly beloved in his native country, where he was a fi nalist for the XXIV International Prize from the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona. He has also received commissions to create posters, murals, and other public monuments. Most importantly, Barcelona’s Fundació Vila Casas, opened in 1986 to highlight the leading artists of Spain and now viewed throughout Europe as an important venue for contemporary art, includes a signifi cant collection of Puig’s works, spanning his entire career.

Given his place in Spanish culture, it’s not surprising that when Woody Allen went seeking a model for the artist characters in Viki Cristina Barcelona (2008), played by Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, the direc-tor landed in Puig’s studio. Puig’s paintings appear throughout the fi lm, and the artist tutored Cruz to bring

greater authenticity to her role.

Recently Puig was honored with a prestigious one-man show at the Can Framis Museum, in Bar-celona. This was followed in New York by his inaugural show at the Franklin Bowles Galleries in

December 2014. The beginning of 2015 was marked by a radically ambitious installation of 100 engravings made with Joan Roma, his long-time printmaker, at the Alella in Barcelona.

With his youthful face and compact, athletic build, Puig could easily pass for younger than his fi fty-eight years. Constantly moving, gesturing, drawing, Puig’s body pulses with an energy that cannot be contained. It’s a physical demonstration as eloquent as speaking about his art. His wife Lola, a medical professional and researcher, is a well-matched partner (and yin to Puig’s yang, so to speak), who clearly understands the artist’s mind and soul and con-tributes a layer of calm and order to their family life and the daily operations of the studio.

Agustí’s studio is in a converted textile mill, enormous and fi lled with light. The building’s spacious industrial origins allow the artist to envision and create his extremely large-scaled works. Sketchbooks abound, drawers contain works on paper; dozens of canvases lean against the walls in different states. It is a place of work, action, and constant experimentation. Puig might begin with a large canvas propped against the wall; a suggestion of the human fi gure is

summoned in a few lines. Thrown upon the fl oor, this body now joins the earth, and a pool of paint is poured and spread in a dance of the artist’s hand. From this, a profi le appears in white;

then another within it, but black. Fine lines are etched into the image and the world from which it is emerging—calligraphic notes from a forgotten language, ideas from a restless sleep. More

paint layers are added, amplifying, altering, even occluding the forms that came before. The visceral power of Puig’s images comes from his direct and energetic physical approach to each

and every work.

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Puig is unafraid of the accidental. Indeed, the spontaneity of his process involves entering into an almost shaman-like trance while working. Allowing the liquidity of his medium to prompt him, he relies upon intuition to coax meaning from the raw materials. As he insists, “When I start a painting, I never know how it will turn out.” A tear or spill easily becomes a source of inspiration; a collaged element can take the work in a completely unexpected direction. One can’t help but draw comparison with the similarly absorbed and performative activity of Abstract Expressionism’s most famous painter, Jackson Pollock.

Puig’s engagement with the subject of the human fi gure remains a constant. His oeuvre is comprised of colossal beings, alone or in communion with one another, the earth and the universe. Men and women: aged philosophers, maidens, wanderers, lovers, orators, ritual initiates, aggressively or amorphously rendered, may even momentarily disappear, but always re-emerge within the artist’s work. Some fi gures are ambiguous; neither male nor female, nor entirely human; some are minotaurs, others are winged, evoking sphinxes; others seem part canine. Fragments abound: cropped male and female torsos, supple backs and buttocks, and most frequently, disembodied, monumental heads or faces, shown in profi le. Often these fl oat above, in mysteri-ous relation to exaggerated oversize legs, hands, or feet. Some of these body parts morph into stylized glyphs signifying thought, feeling, motion—or some combination thereof. These may be emblems of loss or nostalgia for the past, invoking a longing for an earlier civilization, or suggestions of man in his most essentialized state. Puig’s fantastical, hybrid lexicon seems drawn as much from Surrealism as from an ancient, mythic Mediter-ranean realm.

Pablo Picasso’s presence is undeniably felt—in the audacity and inventiveness of Puig’s forms and in his facility in conjuring the body’s range of voluptuous, heroic, and tragic contours. Likewise, the underlying eroticism marking much of Puig’s art—especially in his monumental, contemplative women, reclining nudes, and bearded men with their beautiful companions, evokes Picasso’s classicized imagery of the 1930s and ‘40s. The mysterious anatomy and proportions of Puig’s fi guration also call to mind Joan Miró’s pervasive and ever-curious, synthetic language of personal symbols: strange synecdoches, mystical hybrids, monstrous creatures, and animated, wiry black lines, which remain unrestricted by the laws of gravity or logic.

Among his countrymen, however, Puig’s closest affi nity is with the highly intuitive, enigmatic, and in-tensely material art of Antoni Tàpies, who passed away in 2012. Working in a style known as pin-tura matérica (matter painting), Tàpies’ practice was strongly connected to the broader postwar currents of European existentialists: Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Fautrier, among oth-ers associated with the Art Informel movement, who began using new techniques and non-artis-tic materials in unorthodox and improvisational ways in their paintings. In accord with his innova-tive and philosophically-driven spirit, Tàpies pushed the boundaries of decorum and pictorialism for decades—incorporating distortion, fragmentation, scrafi tti, and roughly-impastoed surfaces, with pure pigment, grit, sand, and varnish, presenting viewers with a more poetically—probing and confrontationally—visceral encounter with art than had ever come before.


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Puig is unafraid of the accidental. Indeed, the spontaneity of his process involves

entering into an almost shaman-like trance while working.

According to the Catalan artist, his innovative and philosophically-driven exploration of materiality, of wrestling with its baseness and employing its most humble, even disagreeable elements within his art was tied to notions of mysticism, even spirituality in the everyday. He believed that if matter is always in fl ux, it could be creatively, alchemically transformed, and that, in turn, art ultimately had the ability to transform the realities of both the artist and viewer.

BETWEEN MYTH AND MATTER

Like his famous predecessor, Puig has been drawn to the infi nite risks, associations, and transformative possibilities of matter, action, and intuitive processes. This is evident in his varied surfaces, primarily worked up in neutral pigments of beige, ochre, black, terracotta, and white: the shades of earth, clay, parchment, dust, sand, and stone, organically enriched here or there with touches of aubergine or teal. Vibrant punctuations of red, suggestive of mineral deposits, fi erce war paint, or ancient Pompeian walls, compel our immediate attention, while dense rubbery elements, fl uid trails and crusty masses of fl eshy pink, white, and ochre (which strongly recall the tactility of Tàpies’ surfaces), offer a corporeal experience that is equal parts sensuous and uncanny.

Refl ecting the story of direct, physical creation and spontaneous alchemy, Puig’s works express an exciting “presentness.” But their very materiality also seems to link them back to a primordial past. Distant, mono-lithic fi gures and abraded grounds convey the passage of time, a palimpsest of experiences, somehow retrieved and brought into view. As in the art of Cy Twombly, who was likewise fascinated by the strata of Mediter-ranean history, culture, and myth, enormous meaning is held within the subtleties of dulled whites—evoking marble and fresco, time, wear, and the ritual of use. In a form of personal archeology, Puig seems to continu-ally excavate his own psyche, asking formal and philosophical questions by digging into layered surfaces.

Hovering as it does between the themes of ancient past and immediate present, earth and cosmos, contour and mass, fi gure and fragment, myth and matter, Puig’s art seems to refl ect a state of duality, even contradic-tion, appropriate to our own complicated era. Beckoning us, whispering, witnessing, crying out, Puig’s fi gures seem to wrestle with the question that has occupied man since the beginning of time. What does it mean to be human? In the well-known Sophoclean tragedy, on the road to Thebes, Oedipus successfully answers the monstrous Sphinx’s perplexing life-or-death riddle by responding, “Man is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening.” But, in surviving the critical test with this simple, intuitive answer, the archetypal hero realizes that his own existential journey, his quest for answers to the deeper meaning of life, has only just begun.

Likewise, Agustí Puig continues on his path of discovery, without a road map...culling poetry from matter, and boldly negotiating and representing the intertwined human myths and precarious truths of the 21st century.

Larissa BailiffNew York-based Art HistorianAnd frequent lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art, NY


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Figure, Foot, Hair and Universemixed media on canvas86 x 116 cm, 33.5 x 45 inches2008


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Figures and Shadowsmixed media on canvas130 x 162 cm, 51 x 63 inches2008


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At the White Tablemixed media on canvas89 x 112 cm, 35 x 44 inches2014


10

Walking Statuemixed media on canvas116 x 89 cm, 45.5 X 35 inches2009


11

Figure and Wingsmixed media on canvas89 x 116 cm, 38 X 51 inches2009


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13

Under the Bluemixed media on paper85 x 125 cm, 33 x 49 inches2009


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The Publicmixed media on wood250 x 250 cm, 97.5 x 97.5 inches2010


15

In Black and Whitemixed media on canvas92 x 74 cm, 36 x 29 inches2009


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Table Striped in Redmixed media on canvas89 x 112 cm, 35 x 44 inches2014


17

Dog Manmixed media on canvas116 x 89 cm, 45 x 35 inches2009


18

Couple and Silk Scarfmixed media on canvas122 x 150 cm, 48 x 59 inches2014


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Woman and Figure by her Sidemixed media on canvas122 x 150 cm, 47.5 x 58.5 inches2009


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Figures and White Linemixed media on canvas90 x 122 cm, 35.5 X 48 inches2009


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Three Womenmixed media on canvas90 x 122 cm, 35 x 47.5 inches2015


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(facing page)

Somebody is Watchingmixed media on canvas160 x 122 cm, 63 x 48 inches2014

Starting Ancient Egyptmixed media on canvas122 x 160 cm, 47.5 x 62 inches2014


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Two Figuresmixed media on canvas130 x 162 cm, 51 x 63 inches2015


27

Hugmixed media on paper69 x 48 cm, 27 x 19 inches2015


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Black Chair in the Middlemixed media on paper79 x 48 cm, 31 x 19 inches2015


29

Three Unveiled Figuresmixed media on canvas114 x 146 cm, 44 x 57 inches2015


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Resting Figure and Numbersmixed media on paper65 x 55 cm, 25 x 21 inches2015


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Seated Woman and Numbersmixed media on canvas150 x 122 cm, 58.5 x 47.5 inches2015


32

Female Figure, Wind and Numbersmixed media on canvas74 x 133 cm, 29 x 52 inches2015


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Figures over Redmixed media on paper79 x 118 cm, 31 x 46 inches2015


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Body Numbers, IImixed media on paper48 x 69 cm, 19 x 27 inches2015


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Body Numbers, Imixed media on paper48 x 69 cm, 19 x 27 inches2015


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Body Numbers, Vmixed media on paper48 x 69 cm, 19 x 27 inches2015


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Numeratiomixed media on paper48 x 69 cm, 19 x 27 inches2015


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(facing page)

Seated Manmixed media on paper118 x 79 cm, 46 x 31 inches2015

Red Shadow on Dark Backgroundmixed media on canvas92 x 73 cm, 36 x 28 inches2013


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Body Numbers, IIImixed media on paper69 x 48 cm, 27 x 19 inches2015


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Body Numbers, IVmixed media on paper69 x 48 cm, 27 x 19 inches2015


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Four Womenmixed media on canvas150 x 183 cm, 58.5 x 71 inches2014


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Figures under Rainmixed media on paper58 x 80 cm, 23 x 31 inches2015


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Three Figures Close-Upmixed media on canvas122 x 150 cm, 47.5 x 58.5 inches2015


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Figure in the Middle (dyptic)mixed media on canvas116 x 178 cm, 45 x 69 inches2010


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(facing page)

Sleeping Couplemixed media on paper48 x 69 cm, 19 x 27 inches2015

Opened Armsmixed media on canvas165 x 200 cm, 64 x 78 inches2007


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To Climb Upmixed media on canvas162 x 130 cm, 63 x 51 inches2013


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Profi le of Woman Waitingmixed media on canvas160 x 122 cm, 62 x 47.5 inches2015


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Two Figures and Shadow Face over Redmixed media on canvas72 x 211 cm, 28 x 82 inches2014


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Woman and Red Backgroundmixed media on canvas100 x 150 cm, 39 x 58.5 inches2006


Woman in the Middlemixed media on canvas81 x 65 cm, 31.5 x 25 inches2006

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Running Figure with Opened Arms (dyptic)mixed media on canvas117 x 178 cm, 46 x 69 inches2010


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Dance Close-Upmixed media on canvas162 x 130 cm, 63 x 51 inches2014


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Two Figures on the Right Sidemixed media on canvas183 x 150 cm, 71 x 58.5 inches2011


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8 At the White Table

28 Black Chair in the Middle

35 Body Numbers, I

34 Body Numbers, II

40 Body Numbers, III

41 Body Numbers, IV

36 Body Numbers, V

18 Couple and Silk Scarf

58 Dance Close-Up

17 Dog Man

32 Female Figure, Wind and Numbers

11 Figure and Wings

46 Figure in the Middle (dyptic)

6 Figure, Foot, Hair and Universe

7 Figures and Shadows

20 Figures and White Line

33 Figures over Red

44 Figures under Rain

42 Four Women

27 Hug

15 In Black and White

37 Numeratio

49 Opened Arms

51 Profi le of Woman Waiting

39 Red Shadow on Dark Background

30 Resting Figure and Numbers

56 Running Figure with Opened Arms (dyptic)

38 Seated Man

31 Seated Woman and Numbers

48 Sleeping Couple

24 Somebody is Watching

25 Starting Ancient Egypt

16 Table Striped in Red

14 The Public

45 Three Figures Close-Up

29 Three Unveiled Figures

22 Three Women

50 To Climb Up

26 Two Figures

52 Two Figures and Shadow Face over Red

59 Two Figures on the Right Side

13 Under the Blue

10 Walking Statue

19 Woman and Figure by her Side

54 Woman and Red Background

55 Woman in the Middle

FALL 2015

PROJECT MANAGER: Stacey BellisPHOTOGRAPHY: Phebe CarterGRAPHIC EFFECTS: Scott SaracenoCATALOG DESIGN: Susan Tsuchiya

Front cover: Profi le of Woman Waiting (detail)

Inside covers & envelope: Three Figures Close-Up (detail)

Pages 1, 60 & back cover: Three Women (detail)

Index



$40

AGU

STÍ P

UIG

: Betw

een Myth and M

atter FRAN

KL

IN B

OW

LE

S GAL

LE

RIE

S


NEW YORK431 West BroadwayNew York NY 10012

212.226.1616 / 800.926.9537

SAN FRANCISCO765 Beach Street

San Francisco CA 94109349 Geary Street

San Francisco CA 94102415.441.8008 / 800.926.9535

www.franklinbowlesgallery.com


Documents

Agusti Puig: Between Myth and Matter