Annet Gelink Gallery proudly presents the third solo-show by Wilfredo Prieto with the gallery.
A big, red, theatre curtain runs over the main gallery wall, informing the surrounding space: Houses without people, people without houses, that gives the title to the entire exhibition. Starting from there the intent of the artist is declared, to stage the contradictions of our contemporary time.
Wilfredo Prieto confers new meanings to ordinary and familiar objects, in the direction of minimal aesthetics and visual immediacy. His practice is rooted in the use of common goods, without any hierarchical distinction: objects are considered for their expressive qualities and the economic, social and cultural meanings they embody. The artist gesture, often minimal, takes them out of context generating short-circuits of meanings, rising people’s awareness on the complexity of reality.
Nowadays, we are subjects to a diversion of the general attention: society is distracted with trivial matters while it’s kept blind from the reality by the media and the lobbies. Just as in the work News on air, where the viewer is reduced to a voyeur, almost incapable of seeing and listening to the news. More and more absorbed in our virtual and social media lives, we are witnessing an overturning of reality, in the actualization of Guy Debord’s foreseeing “La société du spectacle” (1967): appearing is more important than being.
The gallery becomes then a space where objects that belong to our reality are emphasised to create conditions and moments of awareness, searching for micro-truths.
This exhibition is a collection of news and situations of what happens today, marking a new step in Wilfredo Prieto’s practice: he now examines our contemporaneity with an even more sharp and insightful critical gaze.