Carlos Aires (1974) is an internationally acclaimed Spanish artist known worldwide mainly for appropriating icons, traditions and objects from the universe of contemporary popular culture and music. The exhibition at Ani Molnár Gallery, the artist's first solo show in Hungary, presents works that deal with the visual representation of historical and political figures and events, mainly from a critical perspective, often with dark humour and cynicism, always keeping current world political events in mind.
The works of Carlos Aires transcend the technical specificities of photography, sculpture, installation, video art, happening, among other media. One of the main characteristics of his work is transdisciplinarity. His playful formal solutions operate as a critical apparatus on contemporary social and political themes, using a specific set of motifs to explore the phenomena of the global capitalist economic system, the art market and historical narratives, predominantly through pop-cultural references. The works, which use banknotes, portraits of...public figures or lyrics, not only suspend the distinction between low and high culture, but also activate various hidden layers of meaning in the images and texts in question, emphasising their potential for cultural critique in contrast to their banality.
Quotes from pop music hits are juxtaposed with press photography extracted from the archive of the Spanish newspaper ABC, related to disasters in the first half of the 20th century in the “Long Play” series. The works create thematic connections between the photographs and the songs by taking them out of their original context. Pop culture and current politics also intersect in the context of music in the video „Sweet Dreams Are Made of This”, in which men in riot police uniforms dance a tango in an elegant ballroom to a tango version of the Eurythmics' 1980s hit of the same name, devised and produced by the artist himself. The tango was originally an all-male dance, which is a fact that many people today are unaware of. It is a type of popular genre that has been romanticised over time, but whose origins are closely connected to macho culture. The work was produced in 2015, at a time when Spain was going through one of its most recent social crises. In the face of riots in public spaces between citizens and the police, the Ley Mordaza (Gag Law) was passed. Among many other things, it prohibited police officers from publicly showing their identities. In this context, renting police costumes or filming police officers was practically considered a crime. The video reflects on the effects of power in contemporary society.
The other works in the exhibition are linked by a motif that is of particular importance in Carlos Aires' art: money. For the artist, using money as a reference and as a material is a very direct way of reflecting on issues of great urgency for contemporary humans. Aires examines money, and its materialization, as a symbol of power and control.
"Even after all this time" is a collage made of current banknotes combined with images taken from the press and mass media. The protagonists are Michelle and Barack Obama, dancing in front of the reverse of US two-dollars bills, depicting the presentation of the draft of the Declaration of Independence to US Congress. In "I want to break free", from the series Love Songs for times of Crisis, Carlos Aires appropriates the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom on a current banknote and amplifies it. As a trompe l'oeil he places the lyrics of Queen's "I want to break free" and constructs a high relief. The spectacular work titled “Reflections in a Golden Eye” is also based on portraits on banknotes currently in circulation or withdrawn from circulation in many countries around the world. The enlarged cut-outs depict the eyes of historical figures, monarchs and key political figures. These include Elizabeth II and Benjamin Franklin, but also images of the eyes of Sigmund Freud and Giuseppe Verdi. Together they form an all-seeing eye, with which the artist interprets the cultural role of money and explores the long-standing relationship between money, art and value from a contemporary perspective. In each case, Aires carries out a specific deconstruction when creating works on the theme of money: by cutting the banknotes, he destroys the banknote as a commodity, while by recontextualising the portraits on them, he carries out a symbolic deconstruction that questions money as a symbol, as a carrier of the official historical narrative, and as the basis of global capitalism.
Carlos Aires was born in Ronda, Spain in 1974. He obtained a bachelor in Fine Arts at the University of Granada in Spain. Upon graduating in 1997, he moved to the Netherlands and completed his postgraduate studies at Fontys Academy (Tilburg, Netherlands), HISK (Antwerp, Belgium) and Ohio State University (Ohio, USA). He was honored with prestigious grants and awards, including the OMI Residency (USA), Edith Fergus Gilmore Award (USA), Generation2008 Caja Madrid (Spain), Young Belgian Art Prize (Belgium), 1st Award Young Andalusian Artists (Spain), Fulbright (USA) and De Pont Atelier (the Netherlands). He has participated in numerous exhibitions in national and international institutions, such as: CAC (Malaga, Spain), MACBA (Barcelona, Spain), Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (USA), Imperial Belvedere Palace (Vienna, Austria), MUSAC (Leon, Spain), BB6 Bucharest International Biennale (Bucharest, Romania), B.P.S. 22 (Charleroi, Belgium), 5th Thessaloniki Biennale (Thessaloniki, Greece), Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil (Mexico City, Mexico), Canada Contemporary Art Museum (Montreal, Canada). His work can be found within significant public collections: ARTIUM (Spain), MACBA (Spain), Fondation Francès (France), ARTER (Turkey), CAC (Spain), Maison Particulière (Belgium), Ministry of Culture of Spain, Progress Art (Saudi Arabia), National Belgium Bank (Belgium), 21c Museum (USA), MAK (Austria) among others.
Entrada actualizada el el 23 jun de 2022
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