Roberto Molla, from Valencia, will inaugurate his personal exhibition on Saturday, October 15, at the Nuble Gallery. Dear Kauffer is a series of drawings and paintings in which Mollá “cites” US painter and illustrator Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954). The artist was stimulated by the confrontation of different aesthetics, elaborating pieces that, as described by Oliver Johnson in the catalogue, were produced out of the “mud of all precedent paintings.”
Molla learned about Kauffer’s poetics from his reading of English painter and writer Wyndham Lewis’s correspondence (1882-1957); Lewis was a co-founder of Vorticism.
Kauffer, who consequentially took part of Cubist and Vorticism movements, questioned the separation between the low and high culture and introduced the avant-garde language in publicity. In his work he connects abstract forms and figurative images –commercial products– coinciding with Molla’s interest in creating tension among elements of different nature. That is the case of The enemy wants to know what you know, in which he refers to a homonymous poster Kauffer was commissioned to make by the Stetson hats firm during World War II.
A few months ago Molla staged a display in New York in which he literally announced a change of course (titled Ricochet). His interest in Vorticism’s aesthetics became obvious then. Roberto Molla has a degree on Fine Arts, majoring in Painting, by the Polytechnic University of Valencia. His work has been shown in personal and collective exhibitions in Japan, United States, Germany and Spain, among other countries. Since 2008, he has been a regular participant at the FOUNTAIN, SCOPE, NEXT Y PULSE fairs. In 2010, he won the People’s Choice Award of New York’s PULSE. In 2007, he founded Encapsulados along with Juan Cuellar, a project that has been showcased in Tokyo –at a capsule-hotel–, Cartagena, Miami, New York, Berlin, Seville, Valencia and Hanoi. He is a recipient of the ART VISUAL 2001 scholarship by Generalitat Valenciana and the ARCUS Foundation of Ibaraki (Japan) and of that of the Marunuma Foundation and the Spanish Embassy to Japan, granted in 1997.
The exhibition wraps up on December 3.
Source: Press release
Related Publications
