Settlements, the second solo exhibition at the gallery by Venezuelan artist Ricardo Alcaide, proposes a “settlement” of objects and situations that appropriate the gallery space in an almost invasive manner, freely occupying metal structures presented as symbols of imposing rationalist architectures. “My main interest in this exhibition is defined by the sculptural-pictorial, and it questions the current values of Art, chaos, and uncontrolled progress,” the artist states.
Ricardo Alcaide was born in Caracas and currently lives and works in São Paulo. His work reflects his concerns regarding the encounter between the precariousness of metropolises and modernism—a sociocultural and political reference in Latin America—and his intention to gauge the current state of society through the reading of its waste and the multiple interpretations derived from it. Photographs, paintings, sculptures, and drawings portray the city experience and how man inhabits it. Absence and vital impossibilities are conveyed through the analysis of presences and architectural constructions, eventually reaching abstract geometries.
His most notable projects in 2013 include the work Intrusions for Galeria Tajimar in Santiago; participation in the SOLO program curated by Julieta Gonzalez and Pablo Leon de La Barra for the third edition of Artrio in Rio de Janeiro; and the solo project for Pinta in New York, curated by José Roca from Tate’s Latin American Art department. Also in the same year, he became part of the interactive platform Abstraction in Action, dedicated to contemporary abstract art production in Latin America, curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill in partnership with the renowned Sayago & Pardon Collection.
For the exhibition at Baró, the artist will present a large installation of industrial steel shelves with groupings of studio-created works and objects collected from the street—converting their vulnerable aspect into something solid and permanent; a series of bronze sculptures developed from these objects and others made from various materials; and also paintings. In this way, Alcaide highlights the “disposable” and its vulnerable nature, susceptible to destruction and disappearance, which calls for an exercise in observation and rediscovery.
