Since the mid 1980’s, a large number of authors (Calabrese, Sarduy, Deleuze, Virilio, Buci-Glucksmann, Baudrillard etc.) have attempted to arrive at a working definition of contemporary culture using the terms “Baroque” and “Neo-Baroque”.
Neo-Baroque should not represent a simple return to the celebrated style of the XVII and XVIII centuries, but should also, and above all, reflect a spirit or aesthetic category, a form of cultural organisation with its own representational strategies; a cultural metaphor for our own era that adopts and re-defines – sometimes in a contradictory way – an aesthetic and socio-cultural behaviour that has been developed since classical times.
From our point of view, the Greek Laokoon is as Baroque as the monster from Alien. The Carnival of Rio Janeiro or the Berlin Love Parade are two of the most fascinating neo-Baroque manifestations of our times. The designs of Christian Lacroix, Galliano and Jean Paul Gaultier are clearly Neo-Baroque – actually, I would say that the fashion industry as a whole moves under the parameters of Neo-Baroque. Visual media like the pop video are tools of Neo-Baroque representation in their omnivorous vampirization of ideas from other languages. When a DJ remixes music of different styles, he is re-defining, in a Neo-Baroque way, current musical styles. Internet is a virtual space which is as Baroque and overwhelming as a vault painted by Tiépolo or Andrea Pozzo; the Cyborg will probably be the last great creation of the Neo-Baroque... We could even use a cinematic metaphor to explain how we have approached the Baroque in this exhibition: Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons - that refers literally to the universe of seduction and look of French Rococo - is as Neo-Baroque as the Wachowsky Brothers’ The Matrix which anticipates a future dominated by Cyborgs and Virtual Reality.
In this sense, a discourse has evolved which primarily takes account of a cultural model defined in terms of ideas such as complexity, simulation, variation, inconsistency, movement, inversion, metamorphosis etc. that in the sphere of visual arts has translated into formal processes such as transversability, the prioritisation of heterogeneity, the hypertheatralisation of performance, simulation, rhetorication of forms, allegorical impulse, domination of connotations, metamorphosis of perception and representation etc.
In general, we have approached the Neo-Baroque from three complementary viewpoints. Firstly, we have taken those pieces that literally refer to historical Baroque or reinterpret it from the present, such as the work of Philippe Bradshaw, Lars Nilsson, Elena del Rivero or Eve Sussman, who refer to Boucher, Poussin and Velazquez, respectively. In other cases we have selected work that from a formalist point of view could be considered “Baroque”, in which ornamentation, allegorical impulse, tendency to excess predominate – with the Dionysiac, the grotesque, the mask, transvestism, or the blown-up painting. Within this section we have included artists like Matthew Barney, Erwin Olaf, Assume Vivid Astro Focus or Fabián Marcaccio. Lastly, we have selected work that can be considered conceptually Baroque, due to the extraordinary “vanitas” created, in pieces by Jake and Dinos Chapman or Berlinde de Bruyckere, installations by Jan Fabre, Judith Barry and Juan Muñoz, or the fascinating reflection on immigration of Julian Rosefeldt.
The project Baroque and Neo-Baroque. “The Hell of the Beautiful” has evolved from these premises and has led to an exceptional show of more than 60 artists, both national and international, taking place in various spaces around the city – after all, to all intents and purposes, Salamanca itself is a Neo-Baroque city.
The majority of the pieces are notable for their scenographic qualities and visual impact. It should be remembered that the Baroque has always been considered a time that favoured the trompe l’oleil, theatricality and articifice, dreams and visions… “The world is just a great stage”, “life is just a dream”… But we have also wanted the exhibition to be a critical approach to the present. The subtitle “The Hell of the Beautiful” can be seen specifically as a metaphor for the desperate attempt to find a secret order in the recognition of complexity in the world, one that reality is not able to produce on its own, but one which art is not able to reproduce either without overcoming the superficial levels of beauty.
Images
Elena del Rivero
The Blood of Heloise
2005
Cortesía Galería Elvira González
Aura Rosenberg
Angel of History (Spree)
Año: 2004
Fotografía
Medidas: 40 cm x 109 cm
Galerie Edition Kunsthandel GMBH., 45133 Essen, Meisenburgstr. 169-173

OPENING 3 OCTOBER 20.00 HOURS