Exhibition ‘Counterpoint’ by Sergi Aguilar

From the outset of his career in the early 1970s, Sergi Aguilar (Barcelona, 1946) has pursued a photographic practice that ran in parallel with his productions in the field of sculpture.

Today, these images can be viewed as a deep exploration of some of the key themes that have defined the artist’s practice: emptiness and stitches in the landscape, buildings (captured in their most stripped-back, essential volumes), framing as a means of isolation and focus; and the tensions between emergence, repetition and presence.

Counterpoint takes its title from Don DeLillo’s book of the same name, which was published in the now defunct  Grand Street magazine in 2004. The essay investigates three films: Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988), Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993) and Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001), as well as Thomas Bernhard’s novel  The Loser (1983), and an old photograph by Robert Parent showing Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus and Roy Haynes performing at the Open Door in New York in 1953.

The exhibition brings together for the first time in monographic form an exhaustive selection of photographs and various audiovisual works. The exhibition design aims to question spatial hierarchies and the visual codes that shape how we look at images. The display provides an inviting visual experience that is more akin to what occurs in an artist’s studio, or even in old photographic developing rooms or film editing suites.