«POETICS IN LIBERTY»

Pedro José Pradillo

26/10/19 – 26/11/19

The selection of Poetics in Liberty belongs to the collection of collages of a younger Pedro José Pradillo –made when he was between 17 and 18–, which, however, is exhibited now for the first time on the whole –more than forty years after their making–. The works, with the exception of two pieces, are not presented in their original version, but as photographic positives on Dibond.

The title of the exhibition takes us back to an adolescent Pedro José who has stopped being a child to become a mature and conscious man, now ready to make his own decisions and opine on the world that surrounds him with absolute liberty which, incidentally, coincides with the national milieu after the end of Francoism and the liberation that was expected to be brought by the desired and brand new democracy. It is, furthermore, poetics, for Pedro José is sufficiently adult to render judgements, express his feelings and worries through allegory in the form of publicity pictures, magazine cutouts…

We observe in the exhibition how he perfectly combines metaphor and symbology with an explosion of colors with a measured and striking aesthetic. The chromatic abundance and social protest keep the spectators spellbound and disconcerted, searching for the meaning of these disparate photographs that, at first sight, have nothing to do with one another but that together transmit a harmonious and, most of all, conceptual composition.

The lack of national referents for this adolescent creator allows us to consider this collection as a completely singular achievement. Let us remember that these collages began assembly starting in 1977, a time before the surge of the young avant-garde artists of “La Movida Madrileña”. In that way, the only parallelism that we find with these artists is the necessity for fracture that, little by little, surged forth within teenagers during Francoism’s death throes.

Concretely, our artist focused on American Pop Art and saw one of its greatest exponents, the expressionist Robert Rauschenberg (1925 – 2005), as his referent. The American, often labeled as Neo-Dadaist –a current from which Pradillo also drinks–, asserted that his work lay in the open breach between art and life, questioning if the distinction between art and everyday objects truly exists. This way of understanding the discipline reminds us of Pedro José’s way of working, as his creations are made from quotidian objects.

We can thus consider that the author is a premature and original artist, prior to what was the post-Francoist creative expression personified in the previously mentioned “Movida”. Without a doubt, we are faced with a novel and avant-garde work which, merely with the superposition and combination of photographs, manages to move the spectator.

In respect to themes, Pedro José, child of his time, shows what many people began to question in that moment of democratic transition. Thus, the most recurring topics in the show are: sexual liberty, the end of the nuclear family as the only way of life, women’s emancipation, science and the development of the contemporary age, worries for the climate, the disasters of wars and terrorism, the preservation of cultural patrimony… Despite the differences between the themes, all of them breathe an ambient of hope and worry, since we found ourselves in a historical and transcendent period: Spain, lacking even a constitution and not having held general elections, opens towards democracy in a somewhat precarious manner, yes, but with absolute hope. Times are changing and the population with them, not knowing yet just how.

Original text by Gala Pradillo Díaz