Miguel Ybáñez : Time is running out, silence is here to stay
GRIMM is pleased to announce Time is running out, silence is here to stay, a solo exhibition by Miguel Ybáñez at our New York gallery space. This marks the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery and Ybáñez’ first solo exhibition in the United States. A new body of paintings is being presented along with selected sculptures and artist’s books; the latter constituting an important part of the artist’s practice.
Ybáñez works in the tradition of Arte Povera and embraces a range of techniques to create works of varying scale and form. His reliefs, sculptures and assemblages are made of cloth, cardboard, metal, plaster and found objects. The resulting works are unified by an overall off-white finish which imbues the forms with a timeless and ethereal presence. Suspended objects displayed throughout the gallery take on this timeless quality, their abstracted forms seem to resemble shapes from our everyday environment, yet their peculiar proportions and weight question this interpretation.
Central to the exhibition are four large-scale artist’s books, diaries consisting of painted pages. Leafing through the pages, a visual story unfolds illustrating the artist’s stream of consciousness. Each page is a still-life of material containing moments of movement and energy. In these volumes, as in his reliefs and sculptures, Ybáñez strives to negate the boundaries between past and present, ‘high’ and ‘low’ art.
On the walls surrounding the sculptures and books are a series of eight new oil paintings. Using a colorful geometric abstraction that verges on the familiar, Ybáñez’ paintings are reminiscent of dream-like landscapes that question our perception of everyday forms.
Ybáñez states that the essence of his work is to express the universal emotions that exist in our shared extra-dimensional space. He believes that this language without words is understood across cultures and sees his work as a conduit, a medium through which he can pass his ideas to future generations.
