The William Turner Gallery is pleased to present, Javier Pelaez : At the Front Door of a Stone. Based in Mexico City, Javier Pelaez creates work that considers the myriad possibilities involved with the construction and perception of reality. Depicting enigmatic imagery that can be construed as simultaneously materializing and deconstructing, Pelaez’s pictorial language is set in an incessant swing between opposing states of being. Fascinated by polarities, Pelaez’s subjects walk the line between figuration and abstraction, disintegration and formation, certainty and uncertainty.
The title of this exhibition references the 1962 poem, “Conversation with a Stone,” written by Wislawa Szymborska. Through an imaginary dialogue between a human speaker and a stone, Szymborska examines the human desire to understand everything about the world around us and the inevitable reality that it is an impossible quest. Essentially, the stone in this poem serves as a metaphor for all that is incomprehensible to us. With the paintings in this exhibition, Pelaez invokes the primordial form of the stone, highly rendered in multi colors, juxtaposed against hard-edge, planar backgrounds. These cryptic forms seem to defy gravity, weightless yet imposing, their origins and trajectory unknown. The viewer is left with more questions than answers, as Pelaez’s paintings seem to challenge their own existence.
This exhibition will include a number of new paintings on canvas and panel, as well as a series of paintings on paper that Pelaez completed during a recent stay in Los Angeles. Javier Pelaez was born in 1976. His work has been exhibited extensively in Mexico. This exhibition marks his first show with William Turner Gallery, as well as his first show in Los Angeles. He currently lives and works in Mexico City.
