March 23rd to April 23rd, 2023
We have to forget about conventionalisms, labels and clichés, because Jordi Cerdà takes us into a different world, a world brimming with stubborn reality that shakes our curiosity and makes us do the voyeur.
Joaquim Brustega-*Etxauri
JORDI CERDÀ Y GEREBÉS (Barcelona 1949)
Graduated in Fine Arts and designer, his first exhibitions, none in 1968, tend to minimalism and work with geometric elements. At the end of the sixties he began to work in the field of the image and soon entered the more general current of conceptual art, an aspect in which his later works are inscribed, always made from a reflection on art and its representation, which is within the theoretical background of his work.
Among his creations of the seventies we must highlight the series "Minimum Concept" (1972), "Objects and Boxes" (1974-75), "Watery Contacts" (1976), "Suite René Magritte" (1977), "Suite Painting" (1978), "Parallelism Woman's Body in Art" (1977-78), "Everyday Actions: Penetrations" (1979-80). With Roman Vallès "Reflexió-proceso-pintura" (1979-1981), "Reflexiones" (1986).
Among other exhibitions of the last years we can highlight, for several reasons: "Four directions" (Reina Sofia National Museum, 1991); "Urban furniture, work done in New York" (491 Art and research, 1991); assemblies of photographs, Polaroids and inks; "Kosuth's chair is a good chair" (Performance in the window of the Vinçon store, a central gallery in Barcelona, 1993); "Interior with rhetorical figures", a large exhibition that defined the artist's most recent work (4RT Gallery, 1993); and the photoperformance "Inside me there is a little of. ..", a specific work on characters and attitudes of artists and philosophers. One of the retrospective exhibitions was at the Joan Cabré Museum in Calaceit (1995) or others like "Reflejo, deseo y visión" at the Monjo Museum (1999).
He has made experimental films, actions and performances, and has presented more than 500 solo, group and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. His work during the eighties and nineties is a reflection on space, time, media and art. His previous and current experiences are synthesized in the rereading of art and museum images. In "Imágenes de imágenes" (1990), for example, he uses photography as a medium and support to analyze the myth of art, - taking as a starting point Magritte or Lacan, among others - from the re-reading of what are called "masterpieces". In 1992 he participates in the collective exhibition "Ideas and attitudes. En torno al arte conceptual en Cataluña, 1964-1980", which recovers and analyzes this period of Catalan art (also in Manchester and Southampton in 1994).
He has an extensive bibliography compiled in his more than 30 years of continuous work. He is currently preparing other exhibitions in Catalonia, Spain and Europe. In the last two years he has carried out a series of exhibitions and individual actions in Catalonia, among them, "Travels, places and cities", as well as "Images of mirrors" at the Sala Blanquerna in Madrid (1999), or the exhibitions in Toulouse (2000) and Paris, which together with the exhibition in Barcelona at the Greca Gallery, focus on the reflection on art. The exhibition "Autorretratos" made by the Generalitat de Catalunya, retrospectively reviews his actions (2002-2003), and others like "Museo Portátil" (Compact-Arte Collection 2002); "Paralel-lisme", in collaboration with Claude Jeanmart and "ISIS", show an idea of the different registers in which the artist moves, I would also highlight the last 5 solo exhibitions (2011-2021) to the gal-leria H₂O of Barcelona. He is present in different collections, among others in the M.A.C.B.A.
