Guillermo Pfaff
Barcelona, Spain, 1976
In abstraction, in its very diverse currents, numerous aspirations have been deposited, and some of them reappear in the painting of Guillermo Pfaff. Certain elements point to the keys on which his painting is based: the flatness, the chance and the arbitrary nature of the sign. While one line of paintings is directed towards approaches and interpretations close to the avant-garde, another, with more complex legibility, is oriented towards reductionism and a visionary conception.
As in cubism, in some of Pfaff’s paintings, those that tend more towards the constructive and architectural, the most structuralist, the procedures are separated and constructed by fragments. From that first step towards the destruction of depth, reinterpreted from cubism, Pfaff progressively moves away from the symbolic towards a luminous and clear abstraction. In this deconstruction other possible references emerge in a vast imaginary. Pfaff makes no firm distinction between the paint and the canvas itself; His paint is sometimes fabric and this directly becomes paint. Pfaff eliminates the pictorial “cuisine”.
His painting, gradually, has become flatter and his signs refer only to his own nature. What for the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, in his investigations into the arbitrary character of the sign, was a chimerical concept, is now something visionary for Pfaff. And from that absence his painting is organized into interdependent units, which, although similar in sign and signifier, thanks to their position and relationship with the others, acquire a different meaning on each occasion. An example from Saussure perfectly illustrates this issue: “I eat” and “I ate”; a minimal letter variation that produces a great change in meaning. Pfaff’s work is also full of shapes and letters. Letters that are also shapes. The appearance of the sign is an exercise in interpretation about the extreme visibility of his signature on the canvas. A signature made up of several letters (PFAFF) that, regardless of their meaning, their linguistic reference, play a determining role from the formal and pictorial point of view.
Another important issue in his work, which has to do again with procedure, with language, with the function of sign and with skill, is chance. And chance is a transgressive mechanism in terms of the annulment of skill or practice and in terms of the stability that is presupposed to language in its multiple repetitions. Accidents or “precipitated events” are an important part of Pfaff’s work, who has used, in some of his recent works, chance and lack of technique through the exercise of throwing cut out shapes on paper (sometimes thrown by hands), abandoning the idea of authorship, execution and composition.
EXHIBITIONS
‘FFFF’, Ehrhardt Flórez Gallery (2023)
‘A history of recent art 1960-2020’ a project of the Juan March Foundation and DKV, in the Juan March Museum in Palma from Mallorca (2022)
‘Catalan Paintings’, Carles Taché Gallery, Barcelona (2021)
‘Gulf of Roses’, Heinrich Ehrhardt Gallery (2020/2021)
‘Over Easy’, Carles Taché Gallery, Barcelona (2018)
‘Air of Montserrat’, Museum of Montserrat (MDM)/Monserrat Abbey, Barcelona (2017)
‘Guillermo Pfaff / Adrià Cañameras’, Heinrich Ehrhardt Gallery, Madrid (2016)
‘L’espai invisible’, Piramidón, Barcelona (2016)
‘La lliçó de Diògenes’, Tecla Sala, Hospitalet (2016)
University of Connecticut, United States (2015)
‘Lighting’, Carles Taché Gallery, Barcelona (2015)
Palau de Casavells, Girona (2014)
Hyonas Gallery, New York City (2014)
Focus Abengoa, Seville (2014)
‘GRADE: 0’, The Taché Gallery, Barcelona (2013)
‘Gabarró vs Pfaff’, Piramidón, Barcelona (2013)
‘PictoBcn’, Hangar, Barcelona (2013)
May 2 Art Center – CA2M, Madrid (2013)
IDN Festival. Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona (2013)
Yokohama’s art Triennal, Japan (2011)
Matadero, Madrid (2011)
KKKB, Barcelona (2011)
Espai-Ubú, Barcelona (2010)
Graciarts Project, Barcelona (2009)
‘Images ambigúes’, Cadaqués (2004)
Zeitfenester, Berlin (2003)
C. dels Àngels, Barcelona (2000)
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
DKV
MACBA,
Fundacio Vila Casas
AWARDS
Collection Ideas and Proposals for Arts in Spain, Spanish Department of Culture, ARC’08 (2008)
La Mutua Award (2007)
TALKS
Matadero, Madrid (2011)
DENTSU, Tokyo (2011)
Escola Massana, Barcelona (2010)
MACBA, Barcelona (2010)