Xippas Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition in Geneva of the Franco-Argentinian artist Pablo Reinoso. This exhibition will take place in the gallery’s two spaces, rue des Sablons and rue du Vieux-Billard.
Entitled Trames, the exhibition weaves together seventeen recent works: from the wooden and steel benches that have become iconic in Pablo Reinoso’s work, to the sculpted wooden frames, to the presentation of an unpublished series of Indian ink paintings on paper initiated during the first confinement.
A multidisciplinary artist born in Argentina in 1955, Pablo Reinoso is known for his Spaghetti benches. He reinvents the everyday object with humor and frivolity. His work hides both an ethical aspect – the respect of nature and of its materials – as well as a critical one against meaningless processes of a certain type of contemporary design. His installations and sculptures reveal a deep knowledge of the environment linked to our perception of the world, the landscape and space. As part of a process of deployment and development, his work finds its way within monumentality and at the same time, it keeps a human scale.
Among these works, which have never been shown before, Pablo Reinoso will present L’Éclair, a new work in his production, in which he combines the formal language of his steel “Beam Bench” with that of stone, a noble material that comes from the Massangis Quarry in Burgundy. This rock has been used over the centuries in prestigious Parisian architectural works such as the Palais de Iéna, the Trocadero and the Eiffel Tower. While the base serves here as an anchoring element, stabilising the composition, the steel forms follow the organic movement that characterises the artist’s “Beam” series. Through this juxtaposition of languages, the artist creates a work that rests on a delicate balance between inertia and movement.
Through his graphic works in Indian ink on paper, Pablo Reinoso continues his reflection on the concepts of space and movement, two notions that have been at the heart of his plastic work since his first creations. Freed from the constraints presented by the heavy materials he uses in his sculptures, the artist gives himself over to an exploration of the surface through the materiality of ink with a new élan. With his series “Éclosions”, he offers us abstract compositions, evoking a life in the making. Here, the forms follow a principle of growth that also underlies his sculptural work: like the wood of his “Spaghetti” benches or the steel of those in the “Garabatos” series, the Indian ink in these paintings seems to escape the spatial constraints of the surface, spreading out in multiple directions.
One of the first works on paper created by the artist during the first confinement in France, Labyrinthe 12, evokes this state of anxiety and uncertainty that we collectively experienced. A labyrinthine landscape emerges in the darkness that dominates the background; the curved lines that make it up, scattered, refer to the feeling of disorientation provoked by the closure of shared spaces.
Pablo Reinoso (born 1955 in Buenos Aires) is a Franco-Argentine artist who has lived in Paris since 1978. His multidisciplinary practice crosses the fields of sculpture, installation, architecture, painting and design, all of which are fields of formal exploration that he addresses by questioning their nature and limits.
His work has been exhibited in international institutions and major art events, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Grassi Museum in Liepzig, the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MUDAC in Lausanne, the CID – Centre for Innovation and Design in Grand-Hornu, the Venice Biennale, the FIAC Hors-les-murs, the Bienalsur and the AGORA Biennale in Bordeaux. His works are part of the collections of the MALBA and the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo, the MACRO Rosario and the MUSAC in Leon, Spain.
He is currently preparing a monumental exhibition at the Domaine national de Chambord (France), which will open at the end of April 2022.
For more info and inquiries, please contact us: geneva@localhost or +41 22 321 94 14
