ART-PRESENTATION: Peter Halley & Yago Hortal
“H-H. Halley meets Hortal” is a collaborative exhibition featuring the work of artists Peter Halley and Yago Hortal and the materialization of an exhibition idea by Peter Halley. Pictorial abstraction and the use of color seen from two personal perspectives converge in this show, where each one is loyal to its own language and determined to dialogue with each other.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galeria Senda Archive
The color is the main protagonist in the work of the young Spanish artist Yago Hortal. Vigorous strokes added to the use of saturated tones show a suggestive visual impact which have great harmony and boldness, multiple shades of color. The forms and combinations of this wide range span across the fabric, a process that culminates in the spread of the paint off the canvas, bursting into the architectural space. Thus, Hortal uses color as a vehicle to convey vitality and impetus to use pictorial masses contributing to the work severe expressive value, with a sculpture or relief. Since the early 80’s, Peter Halley’s geometric paintings have been engaged in a play of relationships between what he calls “prisons” and “cells”, icons that reflect the increasing geometricization of social space in the world in which we live. As an essayist, Halley has also written about the prison cell as a metaphor for modern isolation. But his originality also lies in his use of color and texture. His works resemble the Hard-edge paintings of Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, and Kenneth Noland, but while the work of those artists may be described as “abstract,” Peter Halley prefers the designation “diagrammatic” for his precise, austere arrangements. After a conversation between Gallery Senda and Peter Halley, he proposed a four-hands exhibition, a collaborative project with Barcelona’s Yago Hortal, who regularly exhibits with the Gallery. The exhibition: “H-H. Halley meets Hortal” has come together after 8 months of conversations, email exchanges, and the cross-posting of ideas, studies, and drafts in which both artists responded to each other’s practice. This led to conversations about things they have in common,and others that differentiate them, inside the world of abstract painting. It highlights experience and youth, rationalism and randomness, geometry and gesture, two approaches to the mastery of color… a back and forth dialogue about what unites them and what distances them. At the gallery each artist exhibits three large paintings, conceived of with the goal of establishing a conversation. In addition, Peter Halley and Yago Hortal have created five collaborative works on paper, signed by both artists.
Info: Galería Senda, Calle Trafalgar 32, Barcelona, Duration: 29/1-23/3/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-20:00, http://galeriasenda.com
