Ignasi Aballí – Textile Material (Matèria textil), 2007 & 7 Identical Paintings, 1990
Textile Material (Matèria textil), 2007
Pieces of textile, glass and iron
100 x 100 cm
7 Identical Paintings, 1990
Painting | Oil on canvas
7ud 25×25
One of the central themes in the work of Ignasi Aballí (Barcelona, 1958) is the impossibility of painting. The artist often links this research to the notion of footprints or traces and ceases to paint and intervene directly in the resulting object. In other words, he cedes his role to the sun, to a number of collaborators or to time and dirt, which leave their mark. Like Marcel Duchamp in Le Grand Verre (1915-1923), in Dust (10 Years in the Studio) Aballí let dust complete his work. In this instance, dust signals the passage of time, trace and memory footprint, the impossibility (but not the renunciation 7 identical paintings) of painting, the critical analysis of its discourses, the need to represent and the incorporation of found objects and materials.
The impossibility of representing occurs in the place where the artist creates, in his studio, which is also the space of experimentation and reflection. Probably, as the dust was forming Dust (10 Years in the Studio), Aballí would have been busy cutting out endless lists from newspapers or methodically covering the surface of a mirror with Tipp-Ex to ‘correct’ it (Correction), making endless colour charts, accumulating the scraps of fabric trapped in the drums of clothes dryers (Textile Material) or perhaps letting different types of paint dry.
