"Cruz-Díez. El color como acción", Galería Cayón Menorca, 2021
It is also one of the most ambitious exhibitions conceived for a gallery by the creator, as it is made up of a long score of works made between 2008 and 2019, a period considered by Cruz-Diez as his most fertile, as he always said that he had found in these recent times - and after half a century researching and adding technical means and advances - the chromatic subtlety that he had been looking for with determination since 1959.
The exhibition, therefore, can well be considered a compendium of the lines of work that defined his production. Cruz-Diez was clear that demonstrating the “autonomy of color” could only be done, with the didactic and scientific toil that always characterized him, by various work paths, all equally valid and important, indeed, all essential.
We will find 'Physichromies' (Physicromies) that force the viewer to move to create the work as it moves; 'Chromointerférences' (Chromointerferences) that investigate the chromatic variations when the colors meet; 'Inductions Chromatiques' (Chromatic Inductions) that allow the emergence of colors that are not present in the plane and even a 'Labyrinthe de Transchromie' (Transchromic Labyrinth) in which, hand in hand with his interest in the crucial role of the viewer as an active participant, he puts the viewer’s sense of sight to the test of visualizing and feeling through the color sheets.
All these works have an exclusive purpose that, however ambitious, can only be singular. In the artist’s words in his last interview, a few months before his passing:
“[At the beginning of my research] I understood that color is never a certainty, it is always circumstantial. Then the chromatic phenomenon revealed itself to me as an autonomous reality that continually evolves in time and space. My works transcend them, because in them color becomes a present moment, without past or future”.
Read full press release HERE.
That’s right, Carlos Cruz-Diez, with this exhibition he manages to show us that color is an autonomous entity that we have to not only see (because we rarely pay attention to it properly), but with which we must learn to live together and which we must feel.
With the aim of presenting Cruz-Diez’s lines of research and involving the viewer in the creation of the work with the artist, the gallery will propose the visitor to wander through the work Labyrinthe by Transchromie A (1965-2017) to see through the color planes the different color combinations that arise with movement within the work. In the same way, Induction à Double Fréquence will be exhibited on the façade of the gallery, a work of almost 6 meters high created by the artist for the Cayón space in Madrid, in 2016, and that, the Atelier Cruz-Diez has allowed to present again.
In recent years, Carlos Cruz-Diez received the National Order of the Legion of Honor (2012), participated in the 2014 Liverpool Biennial and was awarded the Turner Medal (2015) and the International Trebbia Prize (2016). His work has been recognized in numerous exhibitions around the world, with the latest exhibitions of him in China (held between 2010 and 2014) being the most visited.
His work is part of the collection of prestigious museums such as The Tate Modern, London; The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Georges Pompidou Art Center, Paris; the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris or The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among many others. Carlos Cruz-Diez will represent France at the 2020 Dubai World Expo, which was suspended last year due to the pandemic and will open in October 2021.
Recently, between March and June, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid has holded “The Weight of Form” a show that displays part of his output in the field of graphic design in the years spanning until 2015.
On the occasion of this exhibition, a catalog has been published that includes the last interview with the artist a few months before his death. In it, led by the famous curator Jérôme Sans, Cruz-Diez covers more than 50 years of his creation and gives the keys to his work and his research on color. Sans, born in 1960, has curated more than 300 exhibitions, was the co-founder of the Palais de Tokyo (Paris) and has developed his career between Europe, the United States and Asia.
See full catalogue HERE.
Credits:
Courtesy of Atelier Cruz-Diez and Galería Cayón Madrid/Manila/Menorca, 2021.
Photography © Joaquín Cortés Noriega.
