Pep Agut

He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Sant Jordi of the University of Barcelona (1979-84). He began his artistic career as a painter, a condition he has not renounced despite his absorption of the conceptualism and minimalism of the sixties. In the eighties he focused on abstract self-reflective painting, taking up materialist approaches to the French pictorial and sculptural movement Support-Surface incorporating elements of photo-collage. Agut advanced in these investigations through large installations. Later he takes up photography, with text overlays and reflective surfaces, which refer to conceptual works by Dan Graham and Michelangelo Pistoletto.

The work of this great artist makes reference to contemporaneity, to the mechanisms that contemporary art uses, to the established roles in the creation, distribution and consumption of art, to the condition of artist in front of the museum institution, to the sacralization from the contents that are shown to a specific audience, to the functions attributed to the entire art system, and of course to those who activate the works, to that great audience that it ironically calls "secondary actors" recognizing that they are undoubtedly indispensable. As we can see, the systems of representation are the authentic backbone of the artistic experience that Agut proposes to us. These activate and enable the dialogue that every work requires. Each audience will be given an interpretation according to their sensitivity.

Installations of cold architectures, unpainted fabrics or vacuum, are elements that motivate the mental action in the spectator, constructing a distorted reality very close to the most realistic wandering of an artist who proposes critical reflection as the beginning of the reconciliation with the system of art and its mechanisms.

Submitted by Claudia Arbulu Gallery