Cynthia Corbett Gallery
LA Art Show 2016

TRAVELLERS IN TIME: THE FRAGILITY OF THE HISTORICAL MEMORY AND POLITICAL POWERS
ACCLAIMED SPANISH ARTIST LLUIS BARBA PRESENTED BY THE CYNTHIA CORBETT GALLERY Lluís Barba’s monumental photographs depict contemporary society using the same iconography as historical masterpieces. Each of his works is comprised of an ‘underpainting’ overlaid with contemporary visual references creating a symbolism and frame of reference that invite the viewer to navigate between the historical and ever changing contemporary celebrity driven landscape we live in. This unique exhibition will include the West-Coast exclusive viewing of the artist’ seminal work —a reimagining of Picasso’s ‘Guernica’— and this will be the first time this work will be shown in Los Angeles following The Artist’s Solo Museum Show ‘Travels In Time’ At The Fundacio Vila Casas, Barcelona. In Barba’s Guernica, 2014 he uses as a backdrop the Picasso painting made in response to the 1937 bombing of Guernica. A series of cultural portals in the photographic collage invite you to roam and consume. The journey begins in the foreground as a mass of collaged children’s faces, displaced from various sites of conflict, carpet the ground. Everywhere there is threat, but also hope: a tank is covered with flowers; a rainbow shoots towards an agonised woman; Angelina Jolie is an emissary of peace; and Yoda from Star Wars floats above the scene, a wise and powerful force. Barba will also reveal a new work commissioned by LA Art Show. This special project is presented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery during the LA Art Show, January 27-31, 2016.