Thinkspace presents a virtual tour through Julio Anaya Cabanding’s ‘Past and Present‘ now on view through September at MOAH Cedar.
Click here to explore the virtual tour: https://players.cupix.com/p/OAGtW4br
Virtual tour developed by Birdman Photos
Thinkspace presents a photo tour through Julio Anaya Cabanding’s ‘Past and Present‘ now on view through September at MOAH Cedar.
Photos courtesy of Birdman
A video tour of Julio Anaya Cabanding’s ‘Past and Present’ at MOAH Cedar.
On view July 10, 2021 – September 19, 2021
“In one room will be all classic works up till Mannerism. All works will represent religion, mythology, and the Creation. In the other room of MOAH’s Cedar location there will be works from Modernism up to a work of Edward Hopper. In this room I will talk about the present through some works which really talk to us about the pandemic situation, poetically.” – Julio Anaya Cabanding
The relentless passage of time, its impact, and the constant change have been explained by classical philosophy through the concepts of the “past”, the “present”, and the “future”. It is their linear interchange that generates the unstoppable stream we all experience as life, an ongoing process which we had a chance to reexamine to great extent in the past year and a half of the global pandemic. Such historically unequaled premise prompted Julio Anaya Cabanding (1987), to conceptualize a showcase that will talk about human life history through the exploration of the history of painting, with an accent on the most recent period of lockdowns, quarantines, and social distancing. Channeling his personal concerns and experiences through his vast knowledge and love for the medium of painting, and materializing it through an impeccable conceptual and technical ability, Malaga-born artist is introducing his poetic vision of the Past and Present.
Thinkspace Projects in partnership with MOAH Cedar presents Julio Anaya Cabanding’s ‘Past and Present.’
Julio Anaya Cabanding channels his personal concerns and experiences through his vast knowledge and love for the medium of painting and materializing it through impeccable conceptual and technical ability. ‘Past and Present’ comments on the relentless passage of time, its impact, and the constant change have been explained by classical philosophy through the concepts of the “past”, the “present”, and the “future”. It is their linear interchange that generates the unstoppable stream we all experience as life, an ongoing process which we had a chance to reexamine to great extent in the past year and a half of the global pandemic.
We connected with Julio Anaya Cabanding in anticipation of his museum exhibition at MOAH Cedar to discuss this moment, an art movement he’d like to live in, and a dream collaboration.
What was the most challenging piece in this exhibition, and why?
The sculpture. I didn’t know if it would work, because I had never done anything like it. So it was the last piece I did, if it worked that would go to the exhibition otherwise it would not go, and it worked. I am very happy with the result.
What do you think art historians centuries from now will say about this art movement?
Some would say that we have not invented anything new. Everything we do has its origin in history. The artist uses what exists, changes it, transforms it, exaggerates or minimizes it, decontextualizes or appropriates it. And yes, the result may be something new, but the origin, the seed, is previous.
If you had a time machine and could travel to any point in art history, what movement would you travel to, and who would you want to hang out with?
buf.. I would go to many places. I would love to visit Ancient Greece, Italian Renaissance, Spanish and dutch Baroque, French impressionism, Montmartre in 1900 and go to a party at Andy Warhol’s The Factory in the 60s, for example
What is an obscure fact or something unique about the local culture of where you grew up?
I grew up in a neighborhood in Torremolinos called Bajondillo. If I had to say something, it is a very famous town on the Costa del Sol from the 70s, the first luxury hotel in the world was opened here and it was the main tourist destination of the celebrities of the moment. Lots of parties, sun and beach bars. Today Torremolinos wants to continue living from those times, but that tourism and those times will never return. So we could say that I grew up in that decadence
When did you start working with cardboard? What inspired that choice of medium for your work? Do you have criteria for the cardboard you select?
I use the cardboard depending on the painting that I am going to make. The reason why I use cardboard is because I was making interventions in abandoned places and one day after painting a picture I took the plasterboard with me so later I thought of objects from those places that I could use as a medium and cardboard is one of the most, they abound and I like them a lot because they show the passage of time and deterioration.
What does a day in the studio look like? Do you have any pre-studio rituals that help you tap into a creative flow?
Now I have my study at home. So a normal day would be to get out of bed, do some exercise and stretching, eat breakfast, clean the house and go to the study. In the studio I have to paint with the window closed because otherwise I am distracted. I’m so distracted. And I usually put music on the speakers, lectures or some documentary.
If you could collaborate with any artists (from any artistic medium, i.e, film, music, writing etc.), who would it be? And what would you make?
With many. With film director Paolo Sorrentino or Quentin Tarantino, as singer Jay Z, Method Man … and as many artists. And I couldn’t tell you what I would do. I would have to see and study it
Do you remember the first piece of street art you created? What did you make, and where was the piece located?
Of course. I remember like it was yesterday. It was a painting of Monet’s water lilies and it was in Malaga. It already disappeared, a graffiti artist painted on it
Does having an exhibition at a museum feel different than showing work at a gallery?
Yes, the museum has a historical burden that the gallery does not have and the artist feels greater respect or responsibility when working there. Not in the gallery, the white space allows you to experiment freely, in the museum it is more difficult.
Julio Anaya Cabanding
‘Past and Present’
Curated by Andrew Hosner / Thinkspace Projects
On view July 10 – September 19 at:
MOAH Cedar
44857 Cedar Avenue
Lancaster, California 93534
“In one room will be all classic works up till Mannerism. All works will represent religion, mythology, and the Creation. In the other room of MOAH’s Cedar location there will be works from Modernism up to a work of Edward Hopper. In this room I will talk about the present through some works which really talk to us about the pandemic situation, poetically.” – Julio Anaya Cabanding
The relentless passage of time, its impact, and the constant change have been explained by classical philosophy through the concepts of the “past”, the “present”, and the “future”. It is their linear interchange that generates the unstoppable stream we all experience as life, an ongoing process which we had a chance to reexamine to great extent in the past year and a half of the global pandemic. Such historically unequaled premise prompted Julio Anaya Cabanding (1987), to conceptualize a showcase that will talk about human life history through the exploration of the history of painting, with an accent on the most recent period of lockdowns, quarantines, and social distancing. Channeling his personal concerns and experiences through his vast knowledge and love for the medium of painting, and materializing it through an impeccable conceptual and technical ability, Malaga-born artist is introducing his poetic vision of the Past and Present.
Going to his studio during the months of strict lockdowns in Spain, Anaya Cabanding experienced the usually bustling streets of Malaga more desolated and unnerving than he could ever imagine. The lively atmosphere of the coastal Andalucian town was replaced by the uncomfortable emptiness, evoking the ambiance of Giorgio de Chirico’s motionless cityscapes basking in the bright daylight of the Mediterranean sun. During the same period, the artist spent long hours, days, weeks, and months, at home with his girlfriend, physically isolated from the rest of the world. Recognizing the atmosphere of the detached subjects in Edward Hopper’s work, it was one of his paintings, Room in New York, 1932, that finally moved the artist to envision an exhibition with such percipient concept.
Having a chance to create and present an entirely new body of work in an institution such as the Lancaster Museum of Art & History, prompted the artist to reconstruct somewhat of a human life timeline metaphorically narrated through the history of painting. Using his signature trompe l’oeil pictorial interventions on found cardboard, Anaya Cabanding attentively appointed an extensive selection of renowned masterpieces to represent our shared past. Starting from The Origin of the Milky Way by Tintoretto,1575–1580, over Jan van Eyck’s portraits of Adam and Eve from the Ghent Altarpiece, 1432, all the way to Rogier van der Weyden’s Crucifixión triptych, 1443-1445, the five works in the first, pre-Modernism room reference the creation, mythology, and Christianity.
The chronicle continues in the second room where a series of seven landscapes stand for the beauty of untouched nature, which is suddenly interrupted by the presence of what we recognize as a civilized human. Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818, one of the most important works of German Romanticism, here stands as the historic turnaround, a metaphorical portrait of humanity face-off with the unbeatable strength of sublime nature. Such monumental anticlimax is sensibly leading to René Magritte’s The Key of the Field, 1936, and Giorgio de Chirico’s The Return of the Poet, 1911, two depictions of telling surreal scenes that envisioned our recent reality. Continuing over Pablo Picasso’s The Yellow Shirt (Dora Maar), 1939, rendering of a seated woman that is physically falling apart as she’s nervously waiting to stand up from the seated position, the exhibition wraps up suspended in the anticipation of the aforementioned Hopper’s peeping classic.
In an effort to accentuate the illusion of the actual museum display, ‘Past and Present’ marks the first exhibition comprising only works painted to the very edges of the found cardboard. Interested in the confusion that painted images can initiate, especially their relationships with the points of view and/or shadows, the presentation also includes his first works which are stepping off the flatness of the wall and into real space. Just as Anaya Cabanding’s practice of painting priceless masterpieces in abandoned spaces or on found cardboard recontextualizes their prestigious aura, repurposing them into a timeline of human life disputes the centuries of their traditional evaluation, giving them more emotive, existential, human value.
Text courtesy of Sasha Bogojev (Juxtapoz contributing writer)
