We are pleased to announce the opening of the first exhibition of 2024 at Tube Gallery (Carrer Nicolau de Pacs, 25, 07006 Palma) next Friday February 16th at 18:00. The first collaboration between the renowned Mallorcan artist Rafa Forteza (1955, Mallorca) and the gallery, which opened its doors last June in Palma, is entitled “Rafa Forteza: etymologies” and proposes an etymological analysis of the artist’s work, paying attention to the evolution of his plastic language over several decades. With this exhibition the gallery will be part of the program of the next Art Palma Brunch to be held on Saturday, March 23.
Title: “Rafa Forteza: etymologies”.
Artist: Rafa Forteza
Curator: Esmeralda Gómez Galera
Dates: 16/02/2024 – 23/03/2024
If there is something defining in Rafa Forteza’s work, it is the sense of circularity and the experience of the cyclical. The artist moves skillfully from one place to another, closing successive cycles, with the same ease and detachment as he does between disciplines. His entire production is a continuous displacement between painting, sculpture and drawing, but also words, which are essential to his practice and his thinking.
The exhibition “Rafa Forteza: etymologies” is organized in two levels starting with his most recent pictorial works and, from there, proposes a reverse journey through his sculptures and drawings, until reaching the works of the nineties that have survived the passage of time in his studio. As a discipline, etymology is the study of the origin of words, but also of their changes in meaning and form over time. In this sense, the exhibition proposes an etymological analysis of Rafa Forteza’s work, paying attention to the changes in his language over thirty years of production.
Rafa Forteza was born in 1955 in Mallorca, Spain, where he lives and works. He has had solo exhibitions in galleries and museums such as L21, Kewenig Mallorca, Pelaires, Ponce+Robles, Joan Miró Foundation, Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg, Kunst Station Sankt Peter in Cologne or the Museum of Contemporary Art Es Baluard, which hosted a retrospective exhibition in 2016. His work has been regularly shown at international fairs such as ARCO Madrid, Art Basel or Art Cologne, among others and is part of collections such as MoMA in New York, Centro Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Centre Pompidou in Paris, DeutscheBank Collection, La Caixa Collection, Münchner Kunstlerhaus Stiftung in Munich…. He has published artist books together with numerous poets and other artists such as Joan Brossa, José Carlos Llop, José Ángel Valente, Antonio Saura and many others. In 2016 was published the monograph of his work “Más cara” by Printer Fault Press (Spain). During the last few years he has continued to show his work in the national and international context, receiving recognitions such as the Estampa 2021 award.
