Image: Aldo Castillo Gallery, Chicago
Aldo Castillo Gallery is presenting Lluís Barba’s ‘Travellers in Time’ as a virtual exhibition. The exhibition presents the Barcelona artist’s photographic compositions, in which masterpieces of art history meet contemporary tourists, celebrities, brands and symbols.
Named works include ‘Travellers in Time,’ ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ and ‘Hieronymus Bosch Triptych,’ created from 2007 to 2015. Its framing places Bosch, Michelangelo and other masters alongside the personalities, symbols and contradictions of the present, creating conversations about art, identity, culture and society.
Barba’s epic, digitally composed images set paintings from art history against photographs of modern tourists, celebrities, spectators of every background and borrowed advertising. The resulting compositions draw on both canonical artworks and material associated with contemporary public life, including people and commercial imagery.
Barba describes his method in these terms: ‘I get elements of a reality out of context in order to put them in another reality. I use irony and implicit messages in the works such as the global integration of our society. I incorporate the bar code tattoo like a symbol of lost identity, alienation, and massive consumerism.’
Barba was born in Barcelona in 1952 and trained at the Escola Massana Centre d’Art there. He works in painting, photography, sculpture and video art, and he lives and works in the city.
