JORGE PARDO

Jorge Pardo (b. 1963, Cuba) explores the intersection of contemporary painting, design, sculpture, and architecture. All of Pardo’s work shares a sense of colour harmony; in other words, painterly questions come into play in an oeuvre that otherwise tends to work in quite different art historical spheres, including sculpture, installation, and architecture. Using vibrant colors and patterns and natural and industrial materials, he creates everyday objects and spaces with transformed meanings, such as lamps that function as both lighting and sculpture. As Christina Vegh observed, “Lamps, because of their function, are entirely suited to the forging of connections that is such a leitmotif within his oeuvre. (...) The key to Pardo’s objects is atmospheric lightness, sweeping arabesques and ornaments, along with the domestic and private aspects - elements that the French painter (Matisse) addressed throughout his lifetime. If one artist was interested in using colour effects to make light an effect or a subject for painting, the other (Pardo) takes the liberty of distributing actual light sources around the gallery and thus putting painterly questions on the agenda. (...) But Pardo is not concerned with pure light and pure colour in space, like Dan Flavin or James Turrell. And nor is he interested in wall-to-wall illumination. He is concerned with the various different lamp forms as elements that can create a composition within a particular spatial order and yet still recall everyday personal use, revealing their social dimension.”