Alonso Alcalde - Meraki

68 pages
Text(s) by Anna Dimitrova
Photograph(s) by Alonso Alcalde
26.5 x 19.5 cm
Language: English
Hardback
Publisher: Montana Gallery
2022

"Montana Gallery Barcelona has hosted all, or almost all, of the great contemporary artists who have roots in graffiti or urban art. Alonso Alcalde could not be left out. A visionary who, in the late 90s, left his native Chile to follow his passion and landed in what was then the European Mecca of graffiti: Barcelona. Trains, abstract graffiti, and photography are an inextricable part of his persona.

This exhibition is unique — it is a graphic testimony of creativity explored through limits, by an artist who is used to creating in a limitless environment. It presents a vision, a way of life, a fragment of personality. Alonso Alcalde creates by day and night, on metal, on wood, on acrylic glass, on paper, and most poignantly — on massive metal beasts moving through the dark and fascinating silence of tunnels and trainyards. To bring his work to the gallery, he composes and associates materials with moments, colors with calligraphy, generating a fusion of technology and art. Traveling the world, documenting trains, filling his soul with paint. Harnessing all this into a body of work. The night is illuminated by adrenaline. Railways run through cities like the veins of a body, and writers are the blood that run through them with every heartbeat. Cables, lines. Madrid. Bilbao. Mallorca. Spain has always been the cradle of graffiti. The birthplace of the first spray paint brand made for the streets. This is the place a movement was developed, one that nowadays holds its place in history, just like modernism or cubism. An underground current that is still alive despite massification: authentic and inexhaustible graffiti. 

Meraki is the exhibition that Alonso Alcalde brings to Barcelona on September 1, 2022. After the brilliant success of his street masterpiece, Patiperro, the artist will exhibit his latest works, a synthesis representing his vision of graffiti. He tells this story to bring it closer to a loving, curious and interested public. Using collages and DrollagesTM, the artist composes and decomposes. He speaks to the people in the sacred inner circle, but also to those outside of it, offering a glimpse into the intricacies of his world of spray paint, travel and companionship. For once, his works will not be ephemeral. And, fortunately for those who acquire them, they will be eternal." -Anna Dimitrova, Curator Montana Gallery Barcelona.