Galeri 100 Kubik Art Karlsruhe
Black curtains invite visitors into a small space where Jordi Urbón’s (1962, Puigcerdà, Spain) Zirkus (Circus) series is exhibited. In a poetic manner, the artist creates images that transport the viewer into a dreamlike, surreal and solitary world.
Under the title Zirkus, a selection of works from a series by this versatile artist is brought together, approaching a subject that is deeply rooted in the history of art in a highly distinctive way. Major figures such as Picasso, Matisse and Chagall had already shown their fascination with the world of the circus, turning its characters into protagonists of their works. Urbón, however, succeeds in giving the subject a new and entirely personal dimension. Infused with surrealist elements that recur throughout the Catalan artist’s work, these digital paintings, created from photographs, transport the viewer into worlds of the subconscious and dreams.
The circus generally represents fun, entertainment and magic. The ring beneath the big top breaks through the boundaries of what is possible and opens the doors to a magical and, at times, absurd world: an escape from an everyday life that can sometimes become monotonous. Urbón’s works capture this magical aspect of the circus and present the viewer with seemingly absurd scenes in which gravity appears to have ceased to exist, or personified animals perform acts and acrobatics.
Yet the expected bustle of the circus is absent. Instead, Urbón creates melancholic atmospheres and intimate compositions of a world that is strange and, at the same time, familiar, inviting a more private and contemplative experience.
In his approach to the subject, Urbón avoids stereotypical representations and uses only isolated elements that evoke the circus: a big top, an illuminated stage, a rabbit or a clown’s hat. In this way, new contexts emerge, leaving ample space for personal interpretation.
Discover the diversity of this distinctive series, for which one might say:
Let the ring open to imagination!
This press release was published on openPR.
The Circus series forms part of a visual exploration in which Jordi Urbón approaches the world of the circus by moving away from its conventional representation. The ring, the big top, the light and the characters are transformed into settings for a suspended reality, poised between the poetic, the unsettling and the surreal.
The work was presented in Germany by Galerie 100 Kubik in Cologne, with which Urbón maintained an ongoing artistic relationship after winning its 4th Biennial Competition. In 2016, the gallery dedicated the exhibition Manege frei für den Zirkus der Fantasie! to the series.
Later, at art KARLSRUHE 2018, one of Germany’s leading international contemporary art fairs, Galerie 100 Kubik presented Circus once again. The series occupied its own space within the gallery’s stand: a small area enclosed by black curtains that drew the viewer into a dreamlike, solitary and deliberately theatrical universe.
The presentation consolidated the international trajectory of a project in which Urbón uses the digital image as a pictorial territory to construct scenes where reality, memory and imagination cease to have clearly defined boundaries.