Exterminating Angels

Paintings from around 1995. I used to go to a junk store around the corner from my studio in the Raval, which was called Barrio Chino back then. City Hall (El Ayuntamiento) had tried to sanitize both name and hood after tearing-down the worst parts of the neighborhood and partially eliminating, not,  a lot of the marginal activities like prostitution and drug dealing. That still goes on, but it is nothing like it was. I'd go to a junk shop around the corner when I was stuck in the studio, bored, and needed to stimulation visually, and I would find stuff, like old photos and figurines. They'd empty out apartments. It was all personal items. I found a kitschy cast figure of an angel with a movable head. These are the result. Exterminating Angels. Also Brains from the Thunderbirds, which fits with the theme. All these paintings are 230 x170 cm.

Galería Carles Poy

Installation shot, street view, at Galería Carles Poy, 1993. Wandering on the Ramblas, “Mortadelo and Filemon” comics jumped out at me by the Barcelona artist Ibañez, every kid in Spain grew up reading them.

Relocating to Barcelona and getting my present studio live / work space a year later, Carles Poy opened his gallery just literally around the corner on Carrer Jupí. Having him around the corner was a bit strange. The gallery was an intimate ground floor space with an upstairs mezzanine. He was amongst a group of young gallery owners who were betting on young upcoming artists thinking they could ride the 80's art boom wave. There were the Alcolea Brothers, who had Lino Silverstein in El Born which lasted a year and then their main galleries uptown, two brothers two galleries. There was Galería Benet Costa, Toni Bernini Gallery, Galería Thomas Carslens, and Metrònom, an incredible space in El borne.  Barcelona wasn't New York. Doesn't and didn't have a very strong collector base. It was an exciting time in Barcelona with a lot of young artists coming up and showing. Space was cheap, and all kinds of things were happening. The Contemporary Art Museum was built and everything and it all seemed to be promising. But the art market crashed big time in the early 90s, and all these new galleries closed for one reason or another. The Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona, MACBA, recently finished in 1995, a big white thing by Richard Meyer, turned out to be a disappointment. Underfunded from day one. And has never been in the international museum art circuit. No big name shows there. 

Installation view. Galería Carles Poy, Barcelona, 1993.

Two Cowboys. Installation shot at Galería Lino Silverstein, 1990. This gallery lasted about a year.  Owned by Fernando Alcolea, he showed a number of high profile New York artists, probably the best known was Donald Baechler. They had some excellent shows there. I've always been interested in detritus, and these images were from a kids' bow and arrow set that I found on Carrer Escudiers. These were some of the first paintings I did in my new studio setup.

Mortadelo and Filemon

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When I relocated to Barcelona in 1988 from woke Toronto, before woke was woke, the city was an alternative. An unknown quantity, out-of-the-way, and for me exotic in its authenticity. I came from Toronto, anodyne, pale, and up its ass, there was no real important painting going on there.

I knew instinctively even before coming to Barcelona that there wasn't a lot going on as far as visual art. Well, there were things going on but they definitely weren't that interesting as far as painting, or seeing paintings, or finding good galleries was concerned. I had moved from one bad painting town to another. A really struck me was the lack of solidarity between artists. With only a few collectors meant everyone starved and fought for the small slice of nothing. I wasn't part of that, which was fine for me. I was more interested in the sailor bars, junkies, and locals. That was inspiring, if not disturbing.  And real.  I developed my work and isolated myself. One thing that grabbed my eye was the comic book "Mortadelo and Filemon", quintessentially Spanish. 

I wandered around my neighborhood, looking at stuff. It wasn't the “Mortadello y Filemon” comic parse that I liked, it was just the colorful zany covers, which were all over the kiosks on the Ramblas.  A continuous presence, very native and pop. The more I looked at it, the more I wanted to paint the frenetic warped surreal scenes and the bright, garish colors. Which I did 230 × 170 cm size in oil. 
At the time, 1988-96, there were some good painting shows passing through Barcelona. Bits and bobs at the Caixa Forum.  Really some great shows: Howard Hodgkin, Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman, the German painters like Keifer and Sigmar Polke and others. The fotos are installation shots from the now defunct Galería Carles Poy in 1993, in Barcelona. 

A FOR-REAL Painter -- the real MacCoy Rory MacBeth

2 very different paintings by the same artist Rory MacBeth. Although they deal with the same issue of perception. 

The sterling board is actually a painting. It challenges our notion of reality as it is perceived, and our expectations of how things really are and not how they just appear to be. 

Rory Macbeth was once a Street Painter in Barcelona. We met on the street 1988 while he was street painting. That was quite common then, and if you were good, you could make a living doing it. I knew a street painting couple who bought an apartment in Barcelona with their earnings of small change. Rory is brilliant, a technical wizzard painting and phenomenally talented. Now he shows all over the place aside from having been one of the organizers of Pilot, in London, an archive and showcase of unrepresented artists.

Gratutious Street Agit-Prop Posters

First poster in a series of 3, A2 size, that were pasted-up in the autumn of '95 in Barcelona. It depicts a woman in leathers (S+M) painting a fellatio. It says: “Being an Artist is Easy… Intensive 3-week courses….Pastiching…all graduates will show in the most prestigious galleries… collectors to buy your work…learn to paint like Tapies, Picasso….Salon Autónimo de Barcelona, Riereta 10" (which was the actual address of my studio) and there were people actually coming by inquiring about taking classes. Which astounded me. 

2nd Installment of Gratuitous Street Posters

2nd street poster A2 size (40 x 58 cm) 16 x 2’’ that went up on the streets in Barcelona in the autumn of '95. It says “You are a Wanker, and you're not alone either --¡Yes Yes!.....Salon Autonimo of Barcelona”. Dopey jerking off onto what looks like a Tapiés painting. 

3rd poster which never got printed. The folkloric “caganet”, the crapping man, atraditional crèche figure which Catalans like to adorn their Christmas Nativity Scenes with. So I made him crapping out a painting instead of, well, crap. Fecundity is creation. “I don't paint my paintings anymore. I crap them out—that way I can produce more art and produce it faster—Barcelona, Autonomous Salon "

Caganer

At that time, the media, and government institutions were referring to “artists” as young creators. Deflecting “art” debate. Change its name a fool no one creating an institutoinal art scene. There was a huge concern in general that local artists weren't getting any attention. Neither by collectors in Barcelona, museums, or internationally. But no one seemed to ask if they, the artists, whoever they were, that nefarious group of creators, deserved any attention at all, which they probably didn't. Whining artists which no one cared about anyway. The other side of the coin was this: if the people who were worried about artist activity had any idea of what they were talking about, which they didn't, then maybe they'd realize that what creates an art scene is first taste, then money, but not talk. But in the end, Barcelona was put on the map because of the Olympics in 1992. And now overrun by tourists.