Beatriz González (1932) is the grand dame of contemporary South American art and an iconic cultural figure in her homeland of Colombia. War and Peace: A Poetics of Gesture provides an overview of the many decades of her impressive career. The exhibition also offers a new perspective on how González approaches figures and gestures as vehicles for conveying emotion.
Since 1962, González has used painting as a means of claiming and interpreting existing images from Western art, pop culture and photojournalism. As a result, her work has often been described as the South American version of pop art – an assertion the artist has always contested. González prefers to refer to herself – with some degree of self-mockery – as a “peripheral painter” whose palette echoes the colours of her native country. In the early 1990s, in response to the growing number of atrocities and political incidents taking place in Colombia, her work became darker and more radical in nature. She began to address themes such as death, drugs, soldiers and guerilla violence, disappearances and (more recently) migration as a national and global phenomenon.
Besides key works by González, War and Peace will also present a number of series based on images from the news. The artist has taken these media images and elaborated them into paintings, drawings, prints and works made for public spaces. In each of these pieces, González concentrates on a single physical gesture in order to express empathy and mutual human understanding. The exhibition includes several works which De Pont acquired for its collection in 2021.
War and Peace is produced in collaboration with MUAC (https://muac.unam.mx) in Mexico City.
Image: Beatriz González, Empalizada, 2001
Photo: Juan Rodríguez Varón
In autumn 2024, De Pont’s new wing will provide space for works by the young Indian artist Amol K Patil (1987). Never-before displayed sculptures, drawings, poetry, audio recordings and light effects will merge to create a theatrical environment. Patil’s work centres on the social situation of labourers and the caste system in his homeland. A style of housing known as chawl, characteristic of the tenement buildings that have housed Mumbai factory workers for generations, is a recurring theme in his work. Patil draws inspiration from these spaces, in which these people from the lower castes have traditionally lived, and from which they are now being evicted. The textures of the walls, the old household objects and work clothing are all traces left by people who have remained unseen and unheard. The artist deftly interweaves these social themes with his own family history. Patil’s father was an avant-garde playwright and his grandfather was a poet. Their existing works are now giving rise to new dialogues concerning the identity of the labourer class and the hierarchical politics of caste in India.
Patil took part in documenta 15 in 2022 and in autumn 2023, the Hayward Gallery in London presented his work in the show The Politics of Skin and Movement. He was until summer 2024 artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and is slated to participate in the 15th Gwangju Bienniale in 2024.
Image: Amol K Patil, Lines Between the City, 2023, photo Tomek Dersu Aaron