After having instigated a revolution in the history of art, and more particularly in the history of painting, which he considered over, the famous Italian American painter Frank Stella has inspired generation of artists, from which are Ahn Hyun-Ju, Alejandro Vega Beuvrin or Ramon Enrich.
“What you see is what you see.” Frank Stella
Korean artist Ahn Hyun-Ju is particularly influenced by this phrase which contains the definition of minimalist painting directly related to abstraction. She qualifies this pictorial style which artistic productions are reduced to a minimal expressiveness to become a pure presence. “I am looking for a simple and pure aesthetic based on the material or the composition of the lines.” she declares.
With minimalist painting, the artists establish an observation: everything has been done and everything has been said in painting. Thus, to continue painting, the artist’s expression, or the need to make sense in history and tradition no longer matter, because painting now consists of producing works of art that occupy the center of the world. space, the only parameter that gives their existence legitimacy.
Moebius 10, Ahn Huyn-Ju
a042007-1, Ahn Hyun-Ju
Minimal art also extends to sculpture, of which artists Richard Serra and Donald Judd are the leaders. Also nourished by a reflection on the perception of objects and their relationship to space, their works reveal the surrounding space which they integrate as a determining element.
Venezuelan sculptor Alejandro Vega Beuvrin was also inspired by this theory to which he has a political dimension. Calling his works “spatial drawing”, he creates two-dimensional objects in a one-dimensional digital space. He thus intends to establish the necessary relationship that sculpture maintains with the space in which it evolves.
Made from laser-cut and assembled sheet metal, these creations also aim to pay tribute to the victims of the Venezuelan civil war, an event that prompted him to settle in Barcelona, Spain.
Barricada #9 aic4 S, Alejandro Vega Beuvrin
However, the relationship to space that art can maintain since the emergence of minimalism is not necessarily opposed to representation. Since minimal art theory is also linked to a formal requirement, abstract and geometric representation is one of the possibilities offered by this artistic movement.
Spanish painter Ramon Enrich creates works in which figuration and abstraction collide. The artist synthesizes architecture and space, and he works in a theatrical conception with a real sense of staging. Through this pictorial process and the addition of patterns setting up the space in perspective, he manages to constitute an idea of infinity in the finished and to create a real feeling of the space.
TRESGRA, Ramon Enrich
