Introduction of the artist:

Ignasi ABALLI (Spain)
Born in 1958, Barcelona, Spain. Lives and works in Barcelona. Selected solo exhibitions: 2012 Tis is not The End, Artium, Vitoria, Spain / 2010 Teoria, Pinacoteca do Estado, Sao Paulo / 2009 Nothing or Something, Suitcase Art Projects, Today Art Museum, Beijing / 2006 0-24h, Museum of Contemporary Art Serralves, Porto, Portugal, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK and Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany / 2005 0-24h, MACBA, Barcelona / Selected group exhibitions: 2007 8th Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates / 2007 52nd Venice Biennale / 1998 11th Biennale of Sydney.

Introduction of works:

Theory, installation, dimensions variable, 2009

Big Mistake, installation, dimensions variable,1998

People, installation, dimensions variable, 2000-2012

The work of Ignasi Aballi has evolved from methodological concerns rooted in matters of viewpoint, visibility and materials to nearly realist works, in the sense that they incorporate elements taken directly from everyday life. It occupies a place somewhere between the fragility of appearance-disappearance and the encyclopedic accumulation of data.

The record or reading of the passage of time plays an essential role in Aballi’s art, materialising in the accumulation of dust on objects, exposure to sunlight, the effects of the weight of books on a shelf and so on. Aballí observes and orders, classifies and shows the traces of involuntary or “natural” actions and juxtaposes them with other, more personal actions as the result of subjective artifice. Hence, images of footprints on the wall, dust accumulated on books or the yellowing of paper exposed to the sun signifies the passage of time, which, rather than eroding or removing qualities from objects, adds and accumulates them.

The media used by Aballí, in addition to the passage of time as a medium, oscillate between those conventional for artistic activity, such as painting, paper, canvas and photography, and some less familiar in this context, such as fluff taken from the filter of a clothes drier and Tipp-Ex correction fluid. The artist thus promotes a democracy of materials. His use of them is interrogative, exploiting the nature of their materiality and the consequences of their combination.