jorge pardo

Das sagt der/die Veranstalter:in:

In his 12th solo exhibition with neugerriemschneider, Jorge Pardo continues his ongoing experimentation with modes of sculpting, combining, transposing and filtering, channeling a wealth of source material to new paintings, sculptural loudspeakers playing a densely populated soundtrack and a series of suspended light works. With these paintings, Pardo curates and distills the history of postminimalist practice, digitally layering its yield, fashioning new compositional tools in the process. Deployed like paint, ink, clay or steel, the photographic is here cast as a medium in and of itself, becoming a means of extracting depth from fused imagery. Manipulated views of works by John Chamberlain, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Donald Judd, Brice Marden and Joel Shapiro are transformed to texturally rich composites of motif and technique, first printed, then painted over and laser-engraved until nearly unrecognizable.

At the center of Pardo’s approach lies the pursuit of eccentric formal structures - a concentration that suffuses his sculpture, installations, works on paper, ceramics and architecture, and questions the very act of looking, complicating and reconfiguring it. How a work is apprehended and the ways in which it can influence its own conditions of reception are of primary importance to the artist. The legacy of postminimalism looms in this negotiation as its eschewal of previously established rules, and its willingness to test limitations, pushing them to their brink, lays the footing for Pardo’s investigations.

Rooted in this art-historical inquiry, Pardo’s paintings each begin with a concise slate of images picturing artworks by his five protagonists. From this cast - one that has left an indelible mark on Pardo’s own practice - a digital composite assembles. Views outlining a crucial period within American artistic production, superimposed and opaque, distorted, rotated and rescaled, enter a unique relation with one another, their values and gestures interwoven. Printed onto canvas, these gatherings become both primer and guides for Pardo. Applied atop these impressions in fine, linear motions, oil paints mine history as they associate with the joined depictions beneath - not only echoing, but entering conversation with them. As gaps between built-up dashes of pigment reveal each foundational print in measured doses, Pardo asks what it means for a composition to take shape, and how color and form enter a space of play. Digital reproduction meets manual interpretation as each component becomes more than itself, interacting and taking on new life. In scales monumental and intimate, the works determine how they are to be seen, dictating the distance at which their nearly pointillist interventions visually coalesce to vibrational fields expanding over spectral underpinnings.

Sculptural loudspeakers accompany these paintings and act as their didactics, emitting a series of songs played simultaneously in layered arrangements. Much like the related canvases, these compositions bring their sources to the point of merger as melodies weave into and out of one another until inseparable. Internal structures mingle and a new, noisier piece emerges - one that evaluates modes of reproduction and the interpretive bent of their systems. 3D-printed grilles adorn the fronts of the speakers’ cabinets, perforated with a liquefied pattern envisioning boundaries made fluid. Suspended sculptures further develop Pardo’s engagement with illumination, flooding the exhibition in light transformed through its layers of ceramic and PETG. Reflective cores mirror the presentation from above, transforming it along their undulations, making reality plastic and shaping a new lens through which to view the world. In both bodies of work, Pardo counters the tangible, albeit elusive imagery of his paintings with the distinctly immaterial: sound and light. He challenges permanence and his media’s abilities to make themselves felt, heard and seen, to pervade and to be present.

Jorge Pardo (b. 1963) has been the subject of international solo exhibitions and special projects including those at Plataforma de Arte Contemporáneo, Guadalajara (2025); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2023); Museum of Art and Design, Miami Dade College, Miami (2021); Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo (2019); Musée des Augustins, Toulouse (2014); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2010); Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2007) and Dia Art Foundation, New York (2000). The artist participated in the 57th Venice Biennale, Venice (2017) and the Havana Biennial, Havana (2012). His large-scale installations include Folly, University of Houston, Houston (2023); Untitled (Café), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2021); L’Arlatan, Arles (2018); Tecoh, Yucatán (2006 - 2012); Latin American Art Galleries, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2008); Untitled (Restaurant), Paul-Löbe-Haus, German Bundestag, Berlin (2002); Untitled, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K21, Düsseldorf (2002); 4166 Sea View Lane, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1998) and Pier, Skulptur Projekte Münster, Münster (1997). Pardo lives and works in Mérida, Mexico.

For further information, please contact: mail@neugerriemschneider.com.