Puerta Roja
Art Stage Jakarta 2017

Puerta Roja, the only gallery in Asia Pacific to specialise in Spanish and Latin American art, has been selected as one of the leading galleries from Hong Kong to participate in its second edition of Indonesia’s premier international art fair Art Stage Jakarta. Art Stage Jakarta will take place from 11 to 13 August 2017 at Sheraton Grand Jakarta Gandaria City Hotel. Curated by Puerta Roja’s Founder Adriana Alvarez-Nichol, Puerta Roja will bring a strong mix of both established and emerging artists.

The highlight of the selected works will be the vibrant works by the internationally renowned Franco-Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez who dedicated his life to the rigours research of colours, lines and perception. Cruz-Diez is one of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, he is recognised as one of the founders of the Op-Art and Kinetic Art movements of the 1950s. Physichromie, the artist’s most complex and celebrated series, will be presented by Puerta Roja for the first time at Art Stage Jakarta. Cruz-Diez began the series in 1959, using three-dimensional strips on a two-dimensional surface. Colours oscillate from one chromatic range to another, creating a kinetic experience in accordance to the viewers’ movement around the piece. The mathematically precise vertical bands harness the phenomena of colour reflection and interference to re-create mesmerising effects seen in nature. He also uses mechanisms of isolating and exaggerating colour contrast and harmonisation which is used not only in this series but throughout his work. From observation and investigation into the wonders of colour, Cruz-Diez generates virtual colours, present in the eyes of the viewer but not in the physical support.

Cruz-Diez is part of more than 60 major museum collections worldwide including MoMA, Tate Modern and Georges Pompidou, and has been well appreciated in the Asia Pacific region since the 1980s, showcasing significant public commissions and exhibitions in Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Juxtaposing works by Cruz-Diez will be the mobile bamboo sculptures by Spain-based French artist Laurent Martin ‘Lo’. Lo’s bamboo sculptures immerse the viewer in the physical and sensorial virtues of the organic material. Closely bound to the forces of nature, Lo’s bamboo sculptures follow strict mathematical laws of balance and movement. His creations are gravity-defying, swinging in the air and drawing curves of harmony like the gracious strokes of Chinese calligraphy. Lo developed deep insight and knowledge into bamboo’s properties and craftsmanship through his travels to Southeast Asia including Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Taiwan. His exquisite bamboo creations are well appreciated internationally as well as the Asia Pacific Region. Lo was recently invited by the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute to participate in the Bamboo Traces Contemporary International Bamboo Art and Craft Exhibition. This exhibition is a worldwide collaboration project, gathering artists and designers from many different countries and cultures, exploring bamboo, a traditional material in Asia, from a modern context. His works have also been acquired by prominent collectors including Hong Kong renowned architect and collector Mr. William Lim.

In tune with Lo’s mobile bamboo sculptures will be the meticulous sculptural paper works by Spanish artist Javier León Pérez. In his stunning three-dimensional works, small elements of carefully cut Japanese paper overlay and interweave gracefully with each other. By repeating detailed processes, endlessly, fractal patterns emerged. Here the eyes are hypnotised by the flowing movement that entwines the macro and micro perspective together. These works have boundless interpretation, invoking associations to landscapes, tree roots or veins. In fact, this is because León Pérez’ extremely personal creative process follows the same structure as the underlying order of nature, as reflected in its organic forms. This concept has many parallels with the philosophical idea of Li (理), a concept found in Neo-Confucian Chinese Philosophy. The artist is the recipient of numerous awards in Spain and his work on Japanese paper was recognised in the Paper Biennial of Contemporary Art at the Museum Rijswijk in the Netherlands, and the Biennale of Contemporary Art Lalin in Spain. León Pérez’ works have been acquired by important Spanish collections, including La Caixa Foundation and DEARTE, and by prominent collectors in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines and Korea.