FRACTURACIONES by J.S. Barbera

Sponsored by the Fundación Telefónica de México, the Fracturaciones (Ruptures) exhibit by Juan Sebastian Barbera Duron will officially open on Oct. 17 at the Amador de los Rios Art Gallery in Madrid.

The exhibition concept is based on rupture, change and abandonment of a structure as opposed to the concept of harmony, as the artist himself wrote in the catalog’s forewords.

The publication also features commentaries by art critic Luis Rius Caso who, “faithful the eyesight’s eyeshot, to the esthetic impact of the signs, Juan Sebastian invites us to experiment delirium on the basis of his work […] Thus, he convinces us of many things: the persistence of desire regardless of our cultural saturation; the seducing powers of nakedness and women’s curves despite our naturalization of such expressions of desire; the need to continue having pleasure based on the esthetic categorization coming from the enjoyment of art and its relation with beauty, ugliness, sublimity, dramatics, perversity; the pertinence of artistic values used as detonators of feelings, mysteries, the knowledge of the coded thoughts, the active inheritance of a modernist trend that believes in the aura-like condition of art to tell the ordinary from the relevant, the outstanding from the trivial.”

Overall, it’s all about a varied exhibit in which the dramatic and the erotic, in which material, chromatic and graphic sensuality come together in pieces that give away a clear-cut influence of Picasso in the representation of faces.

Juan S. Barbera (Mexico D.F., 1964) has been involved in the fine arts since age 17. In 1990 he started traveling across Europe armed with projects and exhibits that allowed him to spend some time in Vienna, Madrid, Barcelona and Paris where he studied Klimt, Schiele, Goya and Picasso. He has conducted over sixty personal and collective exhibits and has taken part in an assortment of collective projects, including Iberoamérica pinta, organized by UNESCO and the Fondo de Cultura Económica in 1997-1998.

In the same breath, he’s painted murals in public places, like the Gandhi Library,

Pasaje Altavista, Lucent Technologies, Sport City and Acuática Nelson Vargas in Mexico City. Wielding a style of his own, Juan S. reinvented himself and painted several collections: Perversas Indulgencias, Derechos de los Niños, Objetos casi and Delirantes.

For more information, visit www.juansebastianbarbera.com and www.galeriaamadordelosrios.com

Amador de los Rios Art Gallery

Fernando el Santo 24, Madrid 28010

Source: Press release and catalog