Pedro Barbeito

1565/2002

January 16 - February 8, 2003
540 West 26th Street

Press Release

Lehmann Maupin would like to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Pedro Barbeito. This is Barbeito's third solo show in New York and his second at Lehmann Maupin Gallery.

Digital Landscapes: 1565/2002 is an installation of paintings that examine the relationship between digital image-making and painting. Each painting represents a particular meeting of the processes of graphics programs and video imagery with that of language and imagery from the history of painting. By staging unexpected meetings between these two mediums of representation, Barbeito presents these paintings as grounds for both the technological medium and the painterly processes to unfold.

Video game stills and old master paintings have been downloaded from the internet, pixelated using software programs, and translated onto canvas with acrylic. The digital is endowed, in a nostalgic gesture, with the texture and physicality of the past, while the naturalness and authority of the painterly image is abstracted and retranslated through the processes of digital image production. In these paintings, Barbeito points to how the digital and the painterly are embedded in each other in fundamental ways. More importantly, it is by exploring their connections that Barbeito blurs the line between what we know as abstract and what we recognize as representational and reveals new ways in which painting can challenge the ways in which we understand and process images.

Pedro Barbeito was born in La Coruña, Spain and received his MFA in painting from Yale University. His work has been exhibited at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City, Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, and Exit Art among others. He lives and works in New York City.

Exhibition Works

Wormhole 2002 acrylic on canvas 108 x 175 inches 274.3 x 444.5 cm LM6364


Evolve 2002 acrylic on canvas 84 x 60 inches 213.4 x 152.4 cm LM6488


La Condesa, Wynne, 2002 acrylic on canvas 40 x 30 inches 101.6 x 76.2 cm LM6362


Joust, 2002 acrylic on canvas 60 x 44 inches 152.4 x 111.8 cm LM6361


Charles III, 2002 acrylic on canvas 96 x 78 inches 243.8 x 198.1 cm LM5229


Fallen, 2002 acrylic on canvas 85 x 102 inches 215.9 x 259.1 cm LM6363


Meninas/Rez, 2002 acrylic on canvas 84 x 84 inches 213.4 x 213.4 cm LM6487


Skirmish in the Mountains, 2001/2002 acrylic on canvas 84 x 120 inches 213.4 x 304.8 cm LM4855