Ignasi Aballí

IGNASI ABALLÍ SANMARTÍ (Barcelona, 1958).
Untitled.
Collage (scraps of clothes).
Iron frame, glass protection.
With Estrany de la Motta gallery labels on the back.
Measurements: 50 x 50 cm.
Multidisciplinary artist close to conceptual art, distinguished in 2014 with the Joan Miró Award for contemporary art, Ignasi Aballí studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, and between 1990 and 2007 he taught at the Massana School in the same city. He made his solo debut in 1986 at the Barcelona Divina gallery, and in 1990 he made the international leap with a solo exhibition held at the Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston. In 1991 he will be presented at the Elba Benitez Gallery in Madrid, and two years later he will have his first solo exhibition in Germany, at the Bayer Foundation in Leverkusen. In France he will do so the following year, at the Novelle Gallerie in Grenoble. However, his first major exhibition will take place in 2003, entitled "Disappearances", at the Estrany-De la Mota gallery in Barcelona. A year later he held a new solo show at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Santander, the first of several museums to host Aballí's solo exhibitions: MACBA in Barcelona in 2005, de Arte Contemporaneo Serralves in Porto in 2006, de Portimao also in Portugal in 2008, the Today Art Museum in Beijing in 2009, the Pinacoteca do Estado in São Paulo in 2010, the Artium in Vitoria in 2012, the Es Baluard in Palma in 2015 and, that same year, the presonal show "Sin principio / Sin final" at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. He has also held solo exhibitions in leading galleries in Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Mexico, Germany, Lithuania, Austria, the United Kingdom and the United States. In parallel, Abellí has participated in countless group exhibitions held all over the world, both in museums and in galleries and foundations of the importance of the Bloomberg Space in London, the Gagosian Gallery in New York, the Maeght Foundation of Saint Paul de Vence in France, the Helga de Alvear Foundation in Cáceres, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the Messen de Clercq Gallery in Brussels, the Nordenhake in Berlin, etc. He has also participated in various biennials, including Venice, Sharjah (United Arab Emirates) and Sydney. Ignasi Aballí began in the art world as a traditional painter, although the medium soon proved to be insufficient for his personal expression, so he began to look for new ways of relating to painting and art in general, thus distancing himself definitively from the representation of reality. Conceptual elements would then become increasingly important in his work, to the detriment of purely pictorial ones. Thus, in the early nineties he will find himself working with works made with sunlight, from which he will move on to the realization of paintings in which the absence of this same light is suggested. A new stage, now completely personal, will begin in Aballí's work, which will finally reach its maturity within a totally conceptual language. Currently, Aballí's works can be found in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the MACBA in Barcelona and other prominent collections, both public and private.