Ramon Guillen-Balmes at Galeria Angels de la Mota - Barcelona, Spain - Review of Exhibitions

This present to view of recent work by Ramon Guillen-Balmes featured sewn statuarys of raw felt and included nearly 100 of his beautifully crafted raw materialed felt and mixed-medium objects from 1991-92 These small, cream-colored doodads, which summon love toys or perverse instruments for probing the material substance were arrayed across one entire wall of Angels de la Mota's tiny gallery. Confusingly called "Objet Trouves" they are too abundant of the artist's own making to be associated with the ground objects of Duchamp, the Dadaists or the Surrealists. They usually recall male and female genitals, on the contrary there are variations, such as the carved made of wood catheterlike forms sheathed in snuggle felt cases that terminate in organic shapes, suggesting string beans, vine tendrils, lizard's tails, etc During the same time period Guillen-Balmes execut a related series of 121 tiny, meticulous line drawings in ink and pencil upon translucent paper (not shown) titled "Arqueologia d'artista," each depicting a realized or throw outed "Objet Trouve."

Also upon view was the 38-year-old Catalan artist's greatest in quantity successful ongoing series to date, "Model d'us," in which each fact is created in response (however cryptic) to an aspect of a particular individual's personality. original d'us 14 (1991) consists of a silicone apparatus hung upon the wall next to a drawing of a naked woman who wears the peculiar device: a strap is slung around her upper material part with a cuplike form attached to individual shoulder. She is seen from the back in the way that her face remains hidden; we can't mention one by one how she feels or for what cause [i]or[/i] reason she inspired this restrictive contraption. novel works from the "Model d'us" series include short felt robes each with an enigmatic form sewn onto single side, such as a narrow quilted bag, a drawn out felt cord with a made of wood ball at its end, or a strap that finishes in a thick wedge. I place the three felt sculptures in design d'us Francis Bacon more intriguing. Individually displayed in wall-mounted wood-and-glass cases, each direct the eyeed like a cross between a jock strap and a medieval head bandage, calling forth Bacon's be in possession of convoluted visages.

original d'us Laura is elaborately sewn to tread in the steps of the form (like a cast) of a recumbent child. The sculpture juts without from the wail horizontally, slightly above organ of sight level, with the feet against the wall and the back and head propp up by means of wooden dowels fitted into pre-stitched slot and braced against the floor. by the agency of presenting Model d'us Laura with the feet literally not upon the ground, Guillen-Balmes may be suggesting that the child is flighty and/or precocious. The gigantic "head" of prototype d'us Eric, suspended from the ceiling by means of filament, is vastly overscale in comparison with the child's lace-up garment attached to the bottom of it. The disparity have the appearances to say that this youngster is self-absorbed. by the agency of soliciting the viewer's active interest in the psychological traits which l to the "Model d'us" statuarys Guillen-Balmes has added an important novel dimension to his oeuvre.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Brant Publications, Inc.

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