Prelude (of a Sci-Fi film noir)
Spanish artist Hugo Alonso is obsessed with understanding our everyday life as a prothesis of cinematic fictions. Audio, painting and video are his ways of exploring the connections between the constructed realities we are exposed to—behind screens and daily emotions.
This exhibition comprises 12 paintings on paper produced for the occasion. These paintings have starting points that were stolen from the Internet, films, and personal images. Organized into the storyboard for a future film, they trace a kind of random but deliberate narrative thread whose notebook can be read on the gallery walls.
Especially porous to visitors’ interpretations, the works are displayed as the beginning of a path that will be travelled in another medium, yet also as something finished in itself. These paintings, understood as fragments of an open “whole,” as points of interpolation—as we would say in videographic terms—need the viewer’s intervention to close their semantic sense.
BIOGRAPHY
Hugo Alonso, 1981. (Soria, Spain)
His individual projects include CRASH (Alzueta Gallery, Madrid, 2022), AUDIO (Alzueta Gallery Turó, Barcelona, 2022), The white door (Llamazares Gallery, Gijón, 2021), Smells like teen spirit (Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona, 2021), UNDONE (DA2, Domus Artium 2002, 2020, Salamanca), November (Miquel Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona, 2017), RAW (Galerie Youn, Montreal, 2017), and Pendulum (CEART, 2016, Madrid).
He has been part of group shows such as Le jardin, miroir du monde (Château du Rivau, Loira, France, 2022), COME WHAT MAY (Aeroplastics Gallery, Brussels, 2021), The clown spirit (Ronny Van de Velde Gallery, Antwerp, 2020-Belgian Gallery, Namur, 2022), Bailar de arquitectura (Fernán Gómez, Madrid, 2019), Las formas de la luz (Miquel Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona, 2019), black et noir group exhibition (Galerie Youn, Montreal, 2018), TOC (DA2, Salamanca, 2016), Poétique quotidienne (Galerie Youn, Montreal, 2016), This is not a love song (Pera Museum, Estambul, 2015), La luz expandida: nuevas tecnologías en el videoarte español (Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, 2015), Arte y Videoclip (Loop Festival, Barcelona, 2012), Existencias (MUSAC, León, 2007), and Heterotopías (Oktogon HfBK, Dresde, 2007).
His recent achievements include: Gold Medal International Exhibition Valdepeñas 2022, Painting Art Madrid Noca Paper Best Solo Project 2016, Gaceta Fundation Young Painters Prize 2013, Young Art Castilla y León Institution 2011, Painting Prize Caja España 2008, Optica Videoart Prize 2008/2007, and Young Artists Prize Castilla y León Caja Burgos 2007.
Alonso’s works have been presented in national and international contemporary art fairs such as ARCO (Madrid), ZONA MACO (Mexico City), VOLTA (Basel), SEATTLE ART FAIR, ART TORONTO, ART PARIS, ART MIAMI, CONTEXT (Miami) ARTE (Madrid), Foire Papier (Montréal) SANTANDER (Madrid), ESTAMPA (Madrid), and ART ON PAPER (NYC).
Alonso’s work can be seen in public and private collections such as MUSAC, DA2, CAB, Colección SOLO, BMW Foundation, CEART, Pilar Citoler, Diputación de Salamanca, Gaceta Fundation, Caja España, Junta de Castilla y León, Bassat, and Rucandio.
Alonso was commissioned by The New York Times Magazine to create a specific artwork for the October 2017 cover.