Silverstein Photography is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition of the highly influential – yet little known - Mexican artist Lourdes Grobet. Throughout her long career she has been associated with Fluxus, Conceptualism and actions; all intercontinental groundbreaking phenomena which scrutinized established art values.
In 1968 while studying as a painter in Mexico, Grobet took a trip to Paris that would change her life.
Lourdes recalls: I was in Paris and something was burning inside me. I didn’t go to museums to see old stuff but rather visited galleries that showed new work. That’s where I came across Kinetic art: form, color and physics integrated as technique into visual experience. Though the place was a wasteland on the national level, Kinetic Art is what inspired me to perform my first action in a jazz concert by Juan Jose Catalayud, creating an atmosphere for it with light and psychedelic projections that changed according to the music. Since then, I’ve worked in photography and multimedia, because I realized there was no reason for me to keep painting in the middle of the twentieth century. It was the time of mass media and that had to be the language I used.
Upon returning from the trip and acting on impulse Grobet went straight to her studio and set fire to her cache of drawings and paintings literally getting rid of everything old.
Promoting a Fluxus sensibility, Grobet thought the object was trapped within the art market. She was searching for means to broaden the field of photography and open the way for artistic exploration and the dematerialization of art. Against preciousness and not wanting to make concessions to the “system”, she embraced the experimental avant-garde of the time, producing artworks that are imbued with spontaneity and humor, intelligence and meaning. Her work helped open up the art world to women and to places remote from the Western world's major urban art centers.
Grobet has exhibited with the Museo de Arte Moderno of Mexico City, Museo Carrillo Gil, Museo Nacional de Arte, Museo de Bellas Artes, Museo Esteudio Diego Rivera, Fondo de Cultura Economica editorial, and Secretaria de Educacion Publica, among others. Grobet's work has been exhibited in the United States, England, France, Holland, Sweden, Venezuela, Brazil, and Mexico.
Artist books Lourdes Grobet and Lucha Libre distributed and published by D.A.P. available September 2005.