Jordi Colomer

JORDI COLOMER (Barcelona, 1962).
"Anarchitekton. Agbar Tower", 2004.
Color photography. Glicee print glued on dibon. Exemplary 27/30.
Signed, dated and justified on the back.
Measurements: 40 x 54 cm; 60 x 75 cm (paper).
The image presents an urban scene in Barcelona, Spain, in which the artist Jordi Colomer is shown running down a busy street while holding a sculpture. This action is part of a public art and video installation project, in which the artist runs through various streets of the city carrying a piece that evokes the silhouette of the Torre Glòries (formerly known as Torre Agbar), one of the architectural icons of contemporary Barcelona.
Originally conceived as a performance for the 2005 Venice Biennale, the work proposes a reflection on the tensions between modern utopia, architecture and the experience of public space. Through the gesture of running, an ephemeral and energetic act, Colomer introduces a critical and poetic dimension that contrasts architectural monumentality with the fragility of the body in movement.
The project is articulated as a visual and performative research on the relationship between the individual and the city, where artistic action becomes a form of symbolic resistance to the urban and social structures that define the contemporary landscape.
Multidisciplinary artist, Jordi Colomer lives and works between Paris and Barcelona. He trained at the Eina School in Barcelona, and studied Art History and Architecture at the University of Barcelona. In the first period of his career he developed an object sculpture to which he gradually incorporated an architectural scale, walkable constructions and references to the theater and its devices. In 1986 he began his video works in the form of micro-narratives with Beckettian roots, in which the characters are confronted with sets and objects, as in "Simo" (1997) or "Le Dortoir" (2001). He then develops a singular vision of the contemporary city. The video series "Anarchitekton (Barcelona, Bucharest, Brasilia, Osaka)" (2002-2004) is one of his most emblematic works, in which he introduces cardboard models, replicas of real buildings and changes of scale. Colomer has also worked as a set designer, collaborating with plays by V. Novarina, J. Brossa, S. Beckett and R. Ashley. Throughout his career he has held numerous solo exhibitions, both in Spain and in Belgium, France, the United States, Japan, Mexico, Germany, Switzerland and Uruguay, among other countries. He has also taken part in important group exhibitions, the most recent of which include "Car Fetish" (Tinguely Museum, Basel, 2011), "La memoria del otro" (Museo Wifredo Lam, Havana, 2011) and "Panorama" (Michel Rein Gallery, Paris, 2010). In 2008 the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris dedicated an important retrospective exhibition to him. He is currently represented in numerous museums and collections, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the MUMOK in Vienna and the MACBA in Barcelona.