Bernardí Roig

BERNARDÍ ROIG (Palma de Mallorca, 1965).
"Flower vase".1989-90.
Diptych. Oil and material on canvas.
Signed, dated and titled on the back.
Measurements: 122 x 50 cm; 123 x 51 cm (frame).

This work is key to understand the formative stage of Bernardí Roig, a period deeply influenced by the Spanish material Informalism, with echoes of artists like Antoni Tàpies or Manolo Millares.

Although Roig is today internationally known for his striking white figurative sculptures and his installations with fluorescent tubes, this early work shows a very different approach, focused on painting and matter.

"Florero" is a diptych that works by opposition and radical contrast between its two panels: the upper part is purely material, with a dense surface reminiscent of a weathered wall or dry earth, full of "wounds". In contrast to the heaviness of the upper canvas, the lower one is a cleaner and flatter space, dominated by drawing. The "vase" is traced with a frenetic, nervous and gestural graphism, almost like a doodle or a seismograph that registers an emotion.

This work from 1989-90 belongs to Roig's early career, a decade before his sculptural language was consolidated (towards the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s).

The work moves in a fascinating tension between material abstraction and figurative drawing, which is deconstructed as a classic theme in the history of art.

Bernardí Roig is considered one of the most relevant contemporary Spanish artists on the international scene, having exhibited in numerous galleries, museums and institutions around the world. His production includes painting, installations, video and even essayistic drift. He has been awarded important prizes such as the Special Prize of the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, the Sotheby's, the Egypt Biennial in 2001 or the official prize of the XXI International Biennial of Graphic Art of Slovenia. Since the mid-nineties, he has held solo exhibitions in leading galleries, museums and art centers such as the Miró Foundation (1995), the Totem il Cannale hall in Venice (1996), the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design of San José in Costa Rica (1997), the Ludwig Foundation in Havana (1999), the Jacobo Borges Museum in Venezuela (2000), the Fine Arts Museum in Oviedo (2000), the Max Estrella Gallery in Madrid (2000), the Adriana Schmidt Gallery in Cologne (2000), the Claire Oliver Gallery in New York (2002) and the Ludwigsburg Museum in Stuttgart (2002). He has also taken part in the Venice Biennial (2001), the Egypt Biennial (2001) and the Arco fair in Madrid. He is currently represented in the AENA, Miró and La Caixa foundations, the Jacobo Borges and Sofía Imber museums in Venezuela, the Ministry of Culture in Mallorca, the Saikade Museum in Japan, the Gille Collection in Belgium, the Ludwig Foundation in Cuba and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Costa Rica.

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