IGNACIO PARDO
SENESCENCIA
Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea
A pair of pupils, a woman’s breasts, wanderers on a beach, and musical instruments – these are the protagonist icons in the work of video artist Ignacio Pardo (Lugo, 1947). Simple iconography, though derived from richness in its formal use as well as in expressive aspects. Senescencia: Ignacio Pardo, the exhibition organized by the CGAC and curated by Cristina Prego, will gather the video artist’s production since the 1980s, and a new work will be completed in situ for the Center.
Ignacio Pardo’s utilization of video as a means of expression, his objects of visual desire, and his personal option when it comes to facing the world of art have forced his works to stay, since the 80s, on the margins of exhibition circuits. However, despite the fact that he is currently a docent, Ignacio Pardo has not stopped experimenting with the camera, to which he attached himself (artistically speaking) in the times of the Super 8 in the 1960s. Loyal to an undoubtedly personal aesthetic, Pardo, who takes his influence from the historical avant-garde models, tends towards extravagance, shadows, and the apparently occult.
Senescencia: Ignacio Pardo will take us along the continuous line, up to the present, of the artistic production that began in the 1980s when the artist adopted video as a means of creation and began making up his own rules. After early theoretical efforts in the 1960s, when the role of video in art was conceptually and historically analyzed, and after its marginalization in the 1970s in favor of a pictorial resurgence, it was in the 1980s that video advanced into multimedia territory and appeared on the international scene, often associated with music. Singular in this context, the experimental works of Ignacio Pardo are represented with the piece Parpadeo from the exhibit La imagen sublime (1987), promoted by the museum Reina Sofía and curated by Manuel Palacio, together with standard video artists such as Antoni Muntadas and Carles Pujol; occasional artists, like El Hortelano and Juan Navarro Baldeweg, and apprentices of the unpredictable future like Xavier Villaverde and Anton Reixa. In those years, Ignacio Pardo won the Certamen Nacional de Video in Vitoria (1986) and was present at ARCO (1988-89), as well as at other international events such as the Documenta de Kassel and the Sao Paulo Biennial.
Later, his work was included in the show Senales de Video (which was curated by Eugeni Bonet in 1995 for the Reina Sofía, and which traveled to other Spanish centers) and in Novos Caminos: Ameazas y promesas da arte electronica (Casa das Artes, Vigo, 1998). Eroticism and new technologies joined together in Igncio Pardo’s works in the 90s, and he became considered one of the country’s pioneers in digital animation with works like Ninfografia (1992). In recent years, Ignacio Pardo has used 3D animation to alter scenes in works like Paseantes (2003), in his obsession with affirming that darkness and death, can, at any moment, break with the fragility of life. At the CGAC, we can also see recent works such as Vientre, Agua, y Fuego, created in 2007.
This exhibition is a unique opportunity to examine the career path of one of the pioneers of video art in Galicia who, as the exhibit’s title suggests, redefines concepts like darkness, aging, and the anguish of life with his images. In conjunction with the exhibition, a catalog will be published, including texts from curator Cristina Prego, CGAC director Manuel Olveira, and specialist in Spanish video art Eugeni Bonet.
Senescencia: Ignacio Pardo
May 3 - July 1, 2007
Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea
Galician Center for Contemporary Art
Valle Inclan s/n - 15704 Santiago de Compostela
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