TENSION IN COMPOSITION - MIGUEL ÁNGEL GIOVANETTI AT MACBA

FRAGMENTS OF PENTAGONS

Series consisting of drawings, digital works and videos.

“This series arises from my work of the last two years in which I have made a large number of drawings with a gel pen on paper of different fragments of the pentagon.

The procedure consists of fragmenting the pentagon into different shapes, in which groups of lines of varying thickness and different orientation are then drawn within each particular fragment, with the different colors of the gel pens, to create compositional tensions and visuals.

The two-minute videos are assembled in very high resolution for projections in medium and large exhibition spaces. Each of the videos starts from a pentagon fragment and from which five layers of different percentages of opacities come out, which rotate in different times and directions, to form the image of a complete pentagon and then the layers rotate in reverse until they return to the original fragment. The use in each video of only five layers of opacities is due to the fact that the number 5, pentagonal, refers to the five sides of the pentagon. These works contain overlays of the lines of the figure of the real fragment with a succession of lines of the same fragments, but of different opacities in order to obtain a kinetic optical situation of the image.” – Explains the artist, Miguel Ángel Giovanetti

Next, the curatorial text by Laura Casanovas

"It is about the straight line, which in its tension constitutes the simplest form of the infinite possibility of movement."

Point and line to plane, Wassily Kandinsky

For a decade, the work of the artist Miguel Ángel Giovanetti places the pentagon at the center of its geometric abstraction. At first, this figure appeared as an integral part of the dodecahedron and, later, as a unit in itself linked to reflections from philosophy in dialogue with the visual arts, in both cases. Always giving it freedom of movement and different compositional bets through painting, drawing and collage. Until we reach the most recent works, where this regular polygon seems to explode with the force of the Big Bang, throwing into space multiple fragments that, unlike other moments in its production, acquire the importance of autonomous units made up of groups of parallel straight lines of varied colors and harmonious rhythms.

These fragments of pentagons favor drawing, made with a gel pen on paper, in the detailed construction of the lines. The perfectionist intention plot yields its rigidity before a diversity of vibrant and delicate colors with a predominance of greens, oranges, yellows, reds and blues. The shades are also combined depending on the thickness changes of the lines in the different series. The power of the fragment - with its modern and avant-garde roots - is associated in the work of Giovanetti, likewise, with graphic and textile design. In their dynamic visual proposal, the drawings can evoke fantastic images such as those of staves that are not afraid to multiply their magnitude and break with horizontality or patterns in constant search and modulation of a destination. The cut-out figure rises subtly above the background of the paper in some sets while, in others, it submerges slightly as it is surrounded by a passepartout following its perimeter. Meanwhile, movement prevails in each work by proposing a different direction in the space of paper (and the world). Regarding the constant interest of the artist, who within his extensive career has looked with special attention to analytical cubism and futurism, the movement is increased in the videos through fragments that make virtual rotations, which play with the possibility of completeness unfolded or condensed. The drawings in the videos are photographs of those made by hand in the works on paper, in a translation that proposes continuity between the real and virtual worlds. These decisions link each image with past and future moments from an event of expansive lines and colors.