Per Amor a l’Art Collection. Ornament = crime?

Historically, the ornament has been considered of secondary importance as an unnecessary element in the structure of an artwork that is tacked on but does not constitute part of its essence or deeper truth. However, the ornamental can break free from that moral condemnation which brands it as damaging and decadent by valuing the invisible flux of the process rather than with the fixed certainty of being.  Understood as a binding and differentiating power, it transverses figuration and abstraction and the Fine and Decorative Arts classifications. If we assume that abstraction no longer means the end of figurative art but the production of autonomous space-time models, which are independently significant forms, then other meaningful relationships between both artistic expressions can be established.

The exhibition includes works of artists from the Per Amor a l’Art collection, who focus on this relationship as they experience other logical representations which transform the formal hierarchies between form and content, foreground and background, the centre and contour, and between a focused and wandering eye.

Artists: Heimo Zobernig, Cristina Iglesias, Juan Uslé, Teresa Lanceta, David Reed, Anna-Eva Bergman, Aaron Siskind, Renger-Patzsch, Araki, Ángela de la Cruz, Harry Callahan, Herbert Franke, Imogen Cunningham, Robert Mapplethorpe, Esteban Vicente, Inma Femenía, Nicolás Ortigosa, and Hans Peter Feldmann, among others.

Photos: Enric Morán