CAAM PRESENTS THE JUAN HIDALGO. JUGANDO CON BOLAS EXHIBITION AT SAN ANTONIO ABAD

From 8^th February to 6^th April, the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria presents the Juan Hidalgo. Playing with balls exhibition at the San Antonio Abad exhibition rooms. This exhibition, the title of which takes us back to our childhood, contains different art pieces by Juan Hidalgo which are separate in time and also in language or support, objets and photography, originally the script for an action performed for the first time around 1965 and with a subsequent etcetera in December, 1966. This is precisely the first piece in the exhibition, and it is followed by others with which the game begins...

Sex, irony, ingeniousness, simplicity, silence, elegance, freedom, game, poetry… are just some of the terms which have regularly been associated to Juan Hidalgo, and they are all present in the items contained in this exhibition.

On this occasion, the catalogue includes all the pieces on display and texts by Xosé M. Buxán Bran who, among other things, says: “These are unquestionably pieces from a game and we are already familiar with the entertaining aspect of Juan Hidalgo’s work, because the art pieces are, as the artist confesses, inspired by the fact that he is a player who, by chance and while playing, discovers the expressive possibilities of a billiard cue and balls; an agile thought which alters, recovers and reinvents the beauty of two such sporting objects. Sport and art? Two worlds which, although they may seem antagonistic with regards to their interest, are actually much closer related when we think in terms of intuition, luck, enjoyment, ingeniousness, skill, pleasure, tactics, training, strength, home team or visitors’ team, competition...

The other text in the catalogue is signed by the curator of the exhibition, Carlos Astiárraga, who, besides presenting a profile of Juan Hidalgo, contemplates the items on display: “Balls”, (1966), this unique object, the original of which was destroyed and re-edited in 1994, is the materialisation of an idea originally conceived for an action, Look at yourself and see, This is what remains, The light of eyes are other works based on the plans for an action. On other occasions the opposite has occurred, with a visual art piece leading to an action. This is the case of The 3 spectacles, a photographic action dated in the year 2000.

The cues, billiard balls and... This set of pieces is based on a fixed structure (wooden base, cue and billiard ball) in which changes occur in the manner of “variations on the same theme”; not in vain did his creative career begin as a musician.

Cue, billiard ball and the rest. This piece made in 1991 was partially destroyed during the party celebrating the closure of the exhibition presented as a tribute to Arthur Cravan in “La Casa de Vacas” in the Retiro Park in Madrid in 1993, and it has not been re-edited before this exhibition. We will now be seeing it on a new support, photography, in a size which is practically identical to that of the original object. The objects inserted in the cue on this occasion are 4 rolls of toilet paper in different colours. It is a photograph of the original object taken by Javier Campano.

This was followed by what are now sculpted objects, Cue, ball and esparto grass, Cue, ball and string and Cue, ball and raffia. All 3 date from 1994 and in each case, 4 balls of the aforementioned materials are inserted, the esparto grass with two balls of the same natural colour and the other 2 of different colours.

1995 brought Cue, ball and plush and Cue, ball and eights, the first with 4 balls of different colours and the second with a different type of element, specifically metal figures of eight which are used for mountain climbing, arranged differently on this occasion, 2 smaller silver coloured eights stuck on the top of the cue and 7 larger eights in different colours at the bottom of the cue, on the base. Closing this series, we have Cue, ball and cotton, dated in 1997, which only has a large reel of off-white cotton.

Pluto, small planet (2006) is the other photographic piece included in the exhibition. It belongs to a series generically named Memory, comprising 4 photographs, of which it is the third. They were first presented in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on occasion of the 1st Biennial of the Canaries in 2006. It is a small whitish ball similar to a golf ball, suspended in a dark blue space. We find in it the poetry of small things and the irony of the title reminds us of the arbitrary nature of man’s plans and, in contrast, the humility of this degraded planet.

All the following art pieces are new, having been born from the fertile womb of JH from a proposal made just a few months ago, in response to the CAAM’s invitation to present a project about Juan Hidalgo. As soon as he heard of the idea, he soon became enthusiastic and, as the 80-year old adolescent that he is, started the machinery in motion.

16 eyes is a long contemplated piece. Originally conceived a few years ago, it is now when the circumstances are favourable. It is a piece in wood with a square shape containing 16 billiard balls of 4 different colours –4 green, 4 red, 4 white and 4 black; Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Each group of colour is on one of the four sides in ritual symmetry. It has the rare beauty of simplicity which JH so appreciates.

The last group of items comprises “small things” and, as always, humour. These types of pieces are not popular among gallery owners, at least in Spain where, following the US, they believe that art is only valued by size. They also represent a tribute to silence, that is, a vacuum. At last, few items and clean spaces, so the eye can rest and the mind can think.

The world in a condom, Dreamball and The hairy ball are the three titles which complete the exhibition and were created at the end of 2007. The first is a collage-object, the other two are found objects. The idea is that all of them together and their final arrangement in space form a whole; you decide whether we have accomplished this. This is a new proposal by Juan Hidalgo for unprejudiced heads, approach it like children and ...”