INTRODUCTION. Frame it as you might, you can’t help but delight in the disorder of Jordi Alcaraz’ work. It frets with purposeful indecision. Formal elements - jagged lines (literal, implied), amorphous shapes, hesitant modeling, ambiguous space (literal, implied) – attest as much. It brims with low-level anxiety, with backstage tentativeness. Is this particular piece a painting, a drawing, or a sculpture? How about a wall-hung installation? Could be all four, depending on what the Catalan artist decides to do at any one moment in the course of the piece’s execution. Are we looking at it from the front side or from the back side which now serves as the front? Could be either or else both. Is it even done? For his purposes – and ours, yes, no, maybe. That backstage tentativeness defines the works’ delight, tinted with at least three shades of poetic:
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
(T.S. Eliot)
Awake forever in a sweet unrest.
(John Keats)
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.
(Robert Herrick)
The work inventories fundamental decisions that go into art’s creation. It’s not about product. They’re done but not-done. It’s not about process. How can you discuss it as process when a series of manual and conceptual sidetracks and interruptions derail its production? Let’s describe it as a trio of pre-s: pre-concept; pre-process; pre-product. Let’s say that Alcaraz articulates the mulling over of material, medium, and platform, each of which he lays bare, gloriously inchoate, more or less resolved. The work looks startled at the same time that it feels honest and sincere, the epitome of simplicity of means and materials.
WHAT’RE THEY ABOUT? "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." Jordi Alcaraz
WHY DO THEY MATTER? The work reminds us how, long, long after representation was no longer the primary goal of art, artists could conduct private, sometimes arcane, investigations into and moderate discourses about art itself while still being visually engaging and accessible.
WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT? A judicious, representative selection of fascinating work that offers a mesmerizing introduction to the artist's oeuvre.
WHAT IF I JUST HAD 10 MINUTES?
Self Portrait at Day and Night. The piece is divided into two rectangles. The left side, presumably Day, shows something being modeled. A head? In its initial stage, it looks like a mannequin’s head. It makes you wonder what likeness of the artist it would confirm, if continued. The Night portion veers off in another direction. It’s transparent. There’s no trace of modeling. The piece represents an honest self-portrait. Honest in that the artist admits how his thinking about himself and, presumably the world, changes from moment to moment. This in turn explains the works’ low-level anxiety caused by the artist’s decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
First Book of Drawings. The literalness, first, and then the ambiguity of this piece astounds. Is it a sculpture of a book? The piece includes, after all, a real book. Is it drawing? It starts out – or else ends – with 2D dry point lines. The lines morph, co-exist with 3D wire lines. Expectations are reasonably raised: a first book of drawings. Those expectations are dashed when we realize that the artist has more primal things on his mind than the presentation of a first book of drawings. First Things First could be its subtitle.
WHO SHOULD SEE IT? Anyone who likes art that is constantly defying boundaries, as per the show’s title. Who likes art that is engaging, deceptively profound and sophisticated, and not a little fun.
THE VERDICT? Relish the show for the way it lets you share the artist’s decision-making process on media, materials, and platform, not in notebooks but in the work itself.
HOW DO I VISIT? Gallery hours are 10:00 a.m. – 6 p.m., Tuesday – Friday; 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Saturday. The show runs until August 31, 2018. The Gallery is located at 357 N. La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, 90036. For more information call (323) 938-5222 or click here.
L'ALTRE (THE OTHER), 2013, Painting on Cardboard, Plexiglass and Wood, 66 7/8 x 87 inches
SENSE TITOL (UNTITLED), 2010, Ink, Cardboard, Plexiglass, and Wood, 58 x 78 inches
IDEES D'ESCULTURA (IDEAS OF SCULPTURE), 2013, Metal, Wood and Acrylic, 29 1/2 x 45 3/4 x 26 1/4 inches
VIATGE A ISTANBUL (TRAVEL TO ISTANBUL), 2012, Book and Glass Eyes, 12 3/4 x 14 3/4 inches
LLIBRE DE PREGARIES (BOOK OF PRAYERS), 2017, Painting, Drypoint, Book, Plexiglass and Wood, 31 1/2 x 39 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches
PRIMER LLIBRE DE DIBUIXOS (FIRST BOOK OF DRAWINGS), 2018, Book, Drypoint, Wire and Plexiglass, 17 1/2 x 21 x 2 1/2 inches
SENSE TITOL (UNTITLED), 2012, Iron and Plexiglass, 10 5/8 x 13 3/8 x 10 inches
AUTORETRAT DE DIA I DE NIT (SELF PORTRAIT AT DAY AND NIGHT), 2010 - 2012, Painting on Cardboard and Plexiglass, 25 x 35 7/8 inches
LA PINTURA DELS PAPERS (THE PAINTING OF PAPERS), 2012, Drawing on Cardboard, Mirror and Paint, 41 x 48 3/4 inches
FORMAR UNA PARAULA DE SET LLETRES (TO FORM A SEVEN LETTER WORD), 2017, Painting, Book, Plexiglass and Wood, 31 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches