“Half: A series of pieces (marble column shafts), divided, fragmented,

are placed on the gallery space and built from being only one half,

looking for the other part to be completed, in search of its lost

original unity and without turning back.

Alberto Peral, September 2017

Ana Mas Projects is pleased to present Half, an individual exhibition of Alberto Peral made as part of Barcelona Gallery Weekend, in which the most recent work of the artist will be shown. Peral’s artwork is within the framework of formal researches that increase the sculpture field adding at his practice different media such as drawing, photography or audiovisual image. A work that emerges from the developments of the form and the primary colors, from the use of techniques as ceramics and collage, that refers to the constructive principles of the historic avant-gardes. Peral uses the geometric figures, spheres, triangles, rhombus, trapeziums, as elements of a formal vocabulary from which he elaborates projects that adapts to the space where they are exhibited. Objects and installations that hide, in their apparent simplicity, mechanisms of precision and complex construction systems, placing the gaze of the viewer in a land of double senses and visual games.

Being conscient of the fact that not just the form but the content of the work is what makes it transcend visually and that its own resistance capacity is what influences the most in the field of thought, Alberto Peral is an artist which way of working respond his own of research around the matter that carries contents that are simple at the eyes of anyone. Francis Bacon said that images gather more sensations around them when they last longer in time and that it is this sensation of perdurability what, thanks to the way that influences in texture, arrived immediately to the nervous system. Coming from a distant culture and though possibilly to support the weight of an entire roof, the work of Peral starts in abandoned columns and become a reflexion around volume, space and time, form and content.

Alberto Peral (Santurce, 1966) is a basque artist, resident from the 90’s in Barcelona. From his first exhibition in Espai 13 of Fundación Miró (1992) until today, the artist has created a path that has taken him to pass through a long series of media, but perhaps his productions within the sculptural genre are what best represents his work. From this genre the artist shows a personal universe made from simple and essential shapes. His projects are characterized by the combination of elements that assemble between them inviting the spectator to be the axis that supports that unit.

His work has been seen in centers such as the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid), the Irish Museum of Moden Art (Dublin) or the Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin). He has also been invited to talk about his work in the Tate Modern (London). It forms part of the main collections of Spanish contemporary art like Banco de España, Artium, la Caixa, Banc Sabadell, Centro de Arte Alcobendas, Fundación Botín, Unión Fenosa, or Fundación Helga de Alvear, among others.