DAVID SHRIGLEY. DON’T (NO LO HAGAS)

DAVID SHRIGLEY. DON’T (NO LO HAGAS)
22.06.2019 - 29.09.2019
MACG - Fundación AMMA

google translation:

Since the late 1990s David Shrigley's work (Macclesfield, Cheshire, England, 1968) has been characterized by a scathing sense of humor, as well as by the handling of a casual and ironic discourse, away from hidden signifiers or intricate symbolisms.

His work, paraphrasing Shrigley himself, "is what it is," that is, it is not necessary to ask what it means; pieces that generate direct and powerful messages through provocative phrases and immediate drawings, perhaps more linked to the line of the cartoon than to the cult art, always through irreverent gestures and blunt simplicity, as well as illustrator of posters, books, art of albums and video clips.

The pieces gathered in this exhibition establish a dialogue between early works and their recent practice, in which the constant reference to everyday life in their discourse is evident. In the Life Drawings series, a title that could be translated in a double sense: first as “drawings or portraits to the natural” and, at the same time, as “drawings about life”, Shrigley captures the model in common, inconsequential and significant situations , depending on who looks at them, showing a compulsion as an artist of imprints of a definitive moment. The characters in their drawings inhabit a bleak world in which they live in a soliloquy that the texts reflect and account for the human condition. In some cases describing the anecdote portrayed and, in others, as aphorisms that the character tells himself.

The phrases that it incorporates in the pieces are a key element, even declining the text exclusively as an image. Being most often handwritten, these allude to the carefree with an ironic feeling, as in the case of the two pieces produced specifically for this show: the Neon Exhibition and the installation I hate balloons, which transform the artist's calligraphy to through industrial processes in a kind of rebel typography after receiving bullying. The text is transformed into a comparsa of the object, a meta-piece, in some cases announcements of the obvious (No reward for viewing this); instructions or commands that nullify themselves (Build something, destroy something [Build something, destroy something]); and, in most cases, descriptions of what the drawing is, for example, the word trash (garbage) next to the drawing of a garbage can. A poetics of pleonasm, a way of revealing the obvious to avoid falling into the multiplicity of signifiers. His work is what it is, and if in this you seek a meaning beyond what has already been given, DO NOT DO IT.

Exhibition organized in collaboration with Fundación Amparo y Manuel (AMMA)