Lorenzo Belenguer
Fine Arts, London London United Kingdom
 
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Brief Summary
I was born in Valencia in 1970. After graduating in Economics, it became clear to me that I needed for a change of direction. In the quest for this, I took the opportunity to travel. I spent some time in Paris and then, on coming to England, I eventually moved to London. This became the place where my career as an artist took shape; I became involved in mounting and participating in exhibitions in unorthodox spaces. This gave me the freedom to develop my own artistic expression.

Please see below a critique written by Kathy Battista, Director, Contemporary Art at Sotheby's.

Lorenzo Belenguer's work straddles the realms of sculpture, painting and drawing. In one area of his practice, he transforms metal objects into sculptures that evolve from the visual rhetoric of Minimalism and double as ‘canvases’.
Belenguer is like a hunter who trawls the city for found objects, sometimes sourced as locally as the back garden of the studios' church. The work is then dictated by his discoveries, which include steel grids, a mattress reduced to its mesh of springs, and blacksmiths' tools. These he reads as masculine objects. He intervenes with these structures by oxidising the metal elements in salt water or acids and dabbing them with paint of primary colours. This transforms how the objects are read, emphasising the points at which layers of meaning converge.
For example, the artist paints the cone of an old anvil a vivid yellow, thereby morphing it into phallic form. In "Homage to Pollock" a spring mattress becomes a three-dimensional, and strangely fluid, abstract canvas.
Belenguer’s work also encompasses drawing, which he interprets as the more "feminine" side of his practice. For an installation he made at the Florence Trust, he drew repeated simple portraits of a female face, which he distressed by placing the sheets of paper into water contaminated with rusted iron. These drawings fill the walls of a niche space he has built, no bigger than a telephone kiosk, from floor to ceiling. A layer of chicken wire covers them, so the niche resembles a cage, perhaps a prison cell. Alongside the niche, a metal basket holds a stack of additional, still-to-be-used, drawings.
The artist describes his female figure as a generic everywoman wearing a head covering. She might be read as being Muslim or the Virgin Mary, as a woman of the Renaissance, the Victorian age or of post-war Britain. Belenguer says she is emblematic of society’s increasingly conservative, and coercive, policies toward women.


Nacido en Valencia en 1970. Después que graduarme en Empresariales, decidí cambiar de trayectoria. Mientras pensaba sobre una dirección, tomé la oportunidad de viajar por Europa en busca de inspiración. Finalmente, llegué a Reading (cerca de Londres) donde desarrollo mi carrera como un artista plástico y donde funde un grupo de artistas (The Rogues Gallery) con la intención de utilizar edificios vacíos como temporales espacios de exposición. Me trasladé a Londres en 2006 para poder desarrollar mi carrera profesional.

En la obra de Belenguer son los objetos de uso cotidiano que cobran una nueva vida. En un mundo obsesionado por el reciclaje y la regeneración el artista valenciano juega con las ideas de la funcionalidad y lo artístico para demostrar que la reutilización es posible hasta para los objetos más cotidianos. Utiliza una pala del jardín, vallas de hierro, alambre, herramientas de metal para crear una obra que se podría considerar como ‘arte cotidiano’ o ‘arte del reciclaje’. Porque en la descomposición estas piezas relegadas de su función principal cobran un valor estético, donde la oxidación con el uso de varios ácidos consigue refractar la luz para crear una textura rica y profunda. Como dice su creador, es como si el proceso de renovación revitalizara a estos objetos comunes para crear un nuevo lenguaje visual.

El bruto aspecto físico de estos materiales se contrasta con toques de pintura en óleos de colores vivos. La pintura, fresca, lisa y alegre nos recuerda que así fue en algún momento el metal; líquido, brillante, antes de que el molde le impusiera su forma y por tanto su función.

Belenguer es un cazador de tesoros que rastrea la ciudad en la búsqueda de protagonistas para su innovador mundo artístico. El espectador contempla estos dos mundos de la funcionalidad y el arte y concluye que quizá hasta en lo más común está la posibilidad de una reinvención sin límites.
Professional Experience










Selected exhibitions

(* solo shows)



2012



TESTIMONIES – A project for the London 2012 Olympics

 

Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, London. Participated in performance led by Leah Capaldi (Allure)

 

Faces & Music, 3bedfordbury Art Gallery – Covent Garden, London

 





 



2011



Minimum: after Minimalism, Intervention Gallery, Anglican Chapel, Kensal Rise Cemetery

RSA New Collective, RSA, Glasgow

 





 



2010



No Soul For Sale – Tate Modern

 

Berliner Liste 2010 - Berlin Art Fair

 

There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch - AkBank Arts Centre, Istanbul

 

Gallery Ouchi, New York

 

Ethereal Material – The Gallery at Willesden Green

 

Take a Pew, St Augustine Church, Forest Hill, London.

 

Minimalism Massimo, Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, Martin Creed, John Latham, Jenny Holzer and other artists, The Gallery at Willesden Green, London

 





 



2009



2009 BIG DEAL - "BOTOXED 69", Camden, London
FOTOx1000, Sala Uno, Festival Internazionale di Roma
 

 





 



2008



Skylark Gallery, Oxo Tower, London

* TulloMarshallWarren, Chelsea, London

The Window, Brick Lane, London

Sala Naus, Santander, Spain

 





 



2007



E:vent Gallery, Bethnal Green, London

The Stables Gallery, Willesden Green, London

Punk, Ada Street Gallery, London Fields, London

The Florence Trust, Islington, London

The Gallery at Willesden Green, London

 





 



2006



London County Hall

VTO Gallery, London

* Artwash, Oxford

Iowa Biennial

Westminster Cathedral, London

Riverside museum at Blake’s Lock, Reading

 





 



2005



Hong Kong Artists’ Biennale

* Museum of Reading

* Kafka Klub, Zagreb, Croatia

The Rogues Gallery, Reading

Remix Festival, Reading

 

 

 





 



2004



Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong

The Arundel Trust, London

Brighton Artists Gallery, Brighton

 





 



2003



The Atrium, Uxbridge

* The Corn Exchange, Newbury

 





Studio space



ACAVA studios, 17-19 Hythe Road, London NW10 6RT

 





Private collections



Spain, France, UK, Germany, Poland, USA

 





Projects/ workshops



2006-

 

2004/6

 

 

2006

 



Gallery coordinator at the Gallery at Willesden Green, London

 

Chairman of the Rogues’ Gallery, an artists group exhibiting in disused spaces in Reading.

 

Artists group presentation at Close proximity conference in Newbury Arts Centre

 





Education



1993



BA Economics, University of Valencia

 





Publications



International Fresh Art Fair (catalogue), a-n magazine, absolut Arts.





 
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