Antonio Ballester MORENO
Antonio Ballester Moreno creates process-oriented works – paintings, collages and ceramics – that materialise through the repetitive gesture of handcrafted geometries in symbolic earth tones.
His aesthetic refers to forms from nature, conveyed in an elementary metaphorical language: yellow for light; blue to represent water; and the mixture of the two creates green, the colour of vegetation; circles are the cycles of the moon and the sun (a nod to the principles of biodynamics that are applied in the vineyard); triangles are trees and mountains.
By using simplistic but determined shapes and colours, Antonio Ballester Moreno has developed a personal vocabulary with which he builds a world of subtle variations and symbolic compositions.
Although his approach is rooted in abstraction, his work evokes the history of African, Islamic and Ottoman patterns and decoration, craft, tapestry, design and influences.
Antonio Ballester Moreno lives and works in Madrid, Spain, and is considered one of the key figures of the young Spanish art scene.
His work is included in the monograph Vitamin P2 published by Phaidon (2012) and is in the collections of Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), Móstoles, Spain; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon (MUSAC), Leon, Spain; Olbricht Collection, Berlin, Germany; and Reydan Weiss Collection, Essen, Germany. Antonio Ballester Moreno has exhibited worldwide at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain; Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Guadalajara, Mexico; Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany; and Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), Móstoles, Spain; and is a recipient of the Artistic Creation Grant from the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon (MUSAC).
A Spanish painter with a penchant for nature and reclusive anarchy in the manner of Thoreau, Antonio Ballester Moreno presents a unique and authentic aesthetic that is both darkly humorous and conceptually dynamic. With its bright colours, broad brushstrokes and childlike forms, the work itself evokes the raw and unsettling nature of outsider art, but there is also a careful and passionate method to the madness. His references range from Werner Herzog’s documentary Grizzly Man, to the writings of John Cage, to Ted Kaczinski’s strange anti-establishment manifesto, ‘Unabomber’. Antonio Ballester Moreno has even developed characters and scenes from the drawings of his young son, Pepe, interweaving them into a fantasy world of social and historical commentary.
Presentation of the work exhibited in the winery
Acquisition date: May 2018
Exhibited above the freight lift
Planets, yellow, grey, red, blues, green, 2018
