Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum presents Pedro Barbeito. Pop Violence, on view July 15 to September 30, 2012.
Pedro Barbeito, Far Flung, 2007 Courtesy of the artist and Charest-Weinberg Gallery, Miami, and Galerie Richard, Paris
Spanish-born, New York-based artist Pedro Barbeito’s exhibition at The Aldrich presents a series of work ranging from 2005 to the present. The paintings in Pop Violence are based on images of war drawn from American entertainment and news media. For Barbeito, these works address the formative role of violence in contemporary life, from a political ethos driven by “terror” and deception to the aesthetics of visual assault prevailing in popular culture. Drawing upon the anxieties of an age when we are afforded, primarily through the Internet, unprecedented visual access to the violence of war and political strife (the conflict in Iraq and the Abu Ghraib images of torture, for example), these canvases materialize through painting the ubiquitous command found in most NYC transportation hubs: “If you see something, say something.”
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