Antonio Ballester Moreno

Pedro Cera is pleased to introduce the fourth exhibition of Antonio Ballester Moreno at the gallery.

10h brings together a new group of works, for which themes of time and space serve as critical components. Space here is constructed by an introduction of temporality – an ambiguous exhibition title, suggestive of duration, as much as of a specific moment in time. Although abstract, the inherent universality of familiar figures and forms in the exhibition generates a rhythm, a conceptual passage into an imaginary landscape, where the verticality and individuality of each object, may it be painting or sculpture, dissolves into a horizontal picture plane of archetypal images, the symbolic nature of which, refers to the collective unconsciousness. Symbols, the final meaning of which is determined by personal experience, spatial position, or the context within which they are assessed, refer to the relativity of the absolute order of things, and to the way knowledge is constructed.

Using a universal language of reduced shapes and bold colors derived from nature, Ballester Moreno applies a symbolic vocabulary organized to echo the dichotomies of nature and the passage of time, where the moon becomes the sun, the day becomes night (…). The play of light can serve us as a useful metaphor, taking the theory of knowledge and that of education back into Plato’s allegory of the cave, into a world of shadows dressed in meaning. Aligned on a horizontal support, a wooden pathway, the flatness of Ballester Moreno’s iron sculptures, based, like his paintings, on cardboard cut-outs, invite through the generosity of their forms to interaction. The pure, somewhat childish shapes of these works are enhanced by the trace of an uneven, hand-made cut of an otherwise mechanically produced object. Surrounded by three paintings of caves painted on raw jute, another reference to Plato’s allegory, the exhibition extends into a scenery where everything is interconnected, and where one thing leads to the other.

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Antonio Ballester Moreno lives and works in Madrid. His work has been exhibited at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain; Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Guadalajara, Mexico and Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), Móstoles, Spain among others. In 2018 Ballester Moreno co-curated and participated in the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo. His work is in the collections of the Museo Reina Sofía Collection, Madrid, Art Situacions, Barcelona, Spain, DKV Collection, Spain, Banco de España Collection, Spain, Olor Visual Collection, Barcelona, Spain, CA2M–Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Móstoles, Spain, MUSAC–Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain, Olbricht Collection, Berlin, Collection Reydan Weiss, Essen, Germany and the Jerry Speyer Collection, New York among other.