Sergi Aguilar (Barcelona, 1946) is a leading Spanish sculptor from the last few generations. His creations, rooted in Minimalism, marked a milestone for Spanish sculpture during the transition years. Bought up in a family with a strong tradition of arts and crafts, a trip to Paris in 1965 brought him into contact with the work of Brancusi, Julio González and the Russian Constructivists. This experience orientates him towards sculpture, to which he gives himself up to completely in 1972.
His work in iron aesthetically intertwines with Minimalism and geometric tradition, including a formal purity. His preparatory drawings and sketches are of great importance in his work, and he begins to work on maps, incorporating tangible reality through photography. From Aguilar's work a rigid concept of rationality and refinement emerges that evolves into an abstract expression of emptiness, of man and his environment. For Aguilar space goes beyond the limits of the environment surrounding man, it rationally prepares him for his own spaces, where he can develop his most intimate convictions.
Aguilar's proposal places the landscape as a supporting subject in the articulation of his sculptural speech and his monumental work is part of various public facilities, especially in Catalonia. Until the 90s his work corresponds to geometric structures related to each other in terms of space-place and in his way of describing himself constructively. From that point, a conceptual change is produced; his works refer to geometries and geographies from different personal experiences in different travels. The artist shows a need to relate the piece to real limits and structures. Terms such as border, building and sign are the starting point for his later works.
This exhibition for the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos is composed of seven pieces gathered under the title Perimetrías, in what is a summary of Aguilar’s entire artistic universe. While the sculptures can be approached, are inclusive and even mysterious, the collection is perceived with a certain coldness and distance by the spectator. The pieces are a series of tables on which some drawings of maps can be seen, with their corresponding signs that overlap and are transferred, creating other spaces with which the artist seeks to create a place of reflection on reading about other relationships.
