Chiaroscuro. Emilio Gallego's Sculptural Works

Chiaroscuro

Emilio Gallego's Sculptural Works

From June 30th to October to 2nd 2005

Sala Oberta - La Nau

From Tuesday to Saturday, from 10 to 13.30 and from 16 to 20 h.

Sunday, from 10 to 14 h.

Commissioned by Valencia University, this project seeks to create a representative icon in the form of a bronze sculpture to reflect the meaning of the educational institution in the world of knowledge and Valencian culture during the past 500 years, a period during which the university catalysed and drove the development of a modern competitive society. The sculpture will help recognise the cooperation of those members of society and the university community who have somehow facilitated and supported the remarkable role played by Universitat.

The astronomic observatory on the roof of the university head office -built in the early 20^th  century by the professor in cosmography and physics of the globe Ignasi Tarazona- has been used as a plastic and symbolic referent for the development of the project.

Formally, it consists of two triangular solid pieces that rotate over an elliptical basis, crossing each other with no contact; one of them seems to break on the vertex, this alluding to classical culture statuary. Thus, the sculpture shapes a figure into a central void that reminds us of the university observatory and includes interesting symbols connected with it as an instrument for the knowledge of the universe and through its relationship with the institution that actually shelters it. Likewise, Chiaroscuro suggests a threshold idea, an open gate to a an open field of culture and progress. The evident ‘open’ nature of this free but protected ‘new-space seeker’ structure represents in a simple but categorical way the longing for conservation and human knowledge. At the same time its openness reflects the democratic principles required by such tasks to evolve in today's society, evidencing the need for conservation, transmission, creation and research values represented by university in the realms of culture, sciences, and arts. Chiaroscuro aims to become a symbol of the whole university community as a way to reward their commitment and efforts in improving the quality of their work and in developing a better world.

Emilio Gallego. Requena, June 2005

ABOUT EMILIO GALLEGO AND HIS “CHIAROSCURO” 

Everybody seems to understand we are settled down in a fragmentary, paradoxical, uncertain and trivial world made up of worlds. That social and cultural “reality” –with which contemporary philosophic approaches seem to agree- does not relieve us of the collective efforts needed in asserting and sustaining the axiology that vertebrates the historic times we live in. In this respect, it is well-known that the contribution of plastic artists (either through “descriptions", “interpretations” or creative “proposals”) is frequently distinctive so as to clarifying aspects in our present, and sometimes nodal in perceiving horizons that will “draw” the “landscape” of tomorrow’s new "reality". 

These are a few ‘cramped’ reflections on Emilio Gallego's sculpture. I followed the evolution of his plastic skills with great interest –after he settled down in Requena, Valencia- and saw how his artistic personality came together displaying “atmospheres” and distilling “sensitivities”. His artistic ‘melting pot’ includes certainties and contradictions, convictions and irony, ideas filtered by reason and fantasies born from subjectivity… The author of murals, sculptures and interventions, he plays with stone, wood, and steel to create figures with strong rural echoes and an intense energetic and animist presence. Multiple meanings can be drawn from his works: representations of natural growth, the story of life, the four elements or the cardinal points, the vegetal and mineral world... But they are also representations of farming implements or grain mills. Emilio Gallego (in his individual and collective exhibitions and his public sculptures in different places in his region, like totems) finds his inspiration in nature’s energy and the expansive need of green awareness. Nature itself, through erosion, oxidation, scraping or scratching, transforms and decants his works welcoming them into its own geological cycle.

The exhibition –Chiaroscuro- illustrates the author’s artistic understanding, swinging from objectualism to installationism. Obviously, the objects - tridimensionally "manufactured"- transcend their implicit aesthetic value, as they are devised for "intervention" in a given space and since the sculptor's aim is to "create atmospheres" shaping open-air signification and communication fields. As Heidegger would put it, the artist replaces the “site” chosen for an artistic object by the creation of a “place” presumably assigned with a symbolic role. In providing the context with an "active value", the artist (a producer of images) can transform, falsify, underline, simulate, introduce integrations, cause dissonance, stress contrast.

Formally and stylistically, his central piece – “Chiaroscuro” (forged in metal during modernity) falls within the context of canonical sculpture and its pluriform lines.  Based on an innovative concept (considering empty spaces as sculptural materials), relevant artists from the second half of the 20th century sealed their respective poetics from their own very personal languages and approaches: Anthony Caro, Jorge Oteiza, Eduardo Chillida, Andreu Alfaro in the 1950s, Martín Chirino, Richard Deacon, Richard Serra… As the author himself says, “it is made from two solid triangles which –from an elliptical base- rotate until they cross each other without contact”. In their empty inside, Emilio Gallego tries to draw something that evokes the old observatory at the headquarters of Valencia University. The symbolic referentiality of this art piece required a lot of thinking from the artist, who was most keen on developing the project: “The evident open-air nature of this protected ‘new-spaces seeker’ structure represents in a simple but categorical way the longing for conservation and human knowledge. At the same time its openness reflects the democratic principles required by such tasks to evolve in today's society, evidencing the need for conservation, transmission, creation and research values represented by university in the realms of culture, sciences, and arts".

Juan Ángel Blasco Carrascosa. Professor of History of Art. Valencia Polytechnic University