Eduardo Paolozzi at C L E A R I N G

Artist: Eduardo Paolozzi

Exhibition title: The Metallization Of A Dream

Venue: C L E A R I N G, Brussels, Belgium

Date: January 16 – March 14, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and C L E A R I N G

CLEARING is proud to present The Metallization of a Dream, the first solo exhibition of Pop Art originator Eduardo Paolozzi in Belgium and the third exhibition of the artist’s work at CLEARING. This exhibition combines two pivotal strains of Paolozzi’s expansive practice produced during the apotheosis of his career between 1962 and 1975: eight mechanomorphic sculptures in cast, extruded, and welded alumium; and four large-scale series of printed works in the form of etchings, screen prints, and photolithographs.

When the Independent Group, co-founded by Paolozzi and other pioneers of British Pop Art, emerged at London’s ICA in 1952, artistic merit was still being assessed on a vertical axis of “high” and “low” culture. The term Pop Art, first coined by critic and IG member Lawrence Alloway, challenged this status quo by shifting art discourse to exist on a “horizontal” axis alongside vernacular forms of mass visual culture. Art, as Nigel Whiteley wrote in his Pop Since 1949 essay in Artforum, would become “one channel within a more socially constructed set of visual communications; art is viewed less in aesthetic terms (in the traditional sense) than along sociocultural lines.” B-movies, comic books, discarded toys, magazine clippings: the marginalia of contemporary consumer life, for Paolozzi, became studies in the fabrication of a new post-war iconography.

The four printed series shown in this exhibition anticipate a networked, ambiguous world in which an overabundance of visual information vyes for our attention. Paolozzi masterfully flattens visual material––from Mickey Mouse to images of machinery—into a dizzying, at times psychedelic visual grammar that renders their potency collective. To this end, J.G. Ballard wrote in his introduction to the 1965-70 photolithographic series, General Dynamic F.U.N.: “Here the familiar material of our everyday lives, the jostling of mass advertising and consumer goods, are manipulated to reveal their true identities.”

In the mid-1960s, Paolozzi began to experiment with industrialized sculpture production techniques, working in close collaboration with C.W. Juby Precision Engineering, experts in the mass production of prefabricated cast metal. Eight sculptures from this crucial period in Paolozzi’s oeuvre are exhibited here, including Suwasa, Trishula, and Kalasan, originally commissioned by Terence Conran as playground sculptures for his Habitat design store in Wallingford (in situ from 1974-1994). Referential of both classical and mechanical forms, these sculptures are nevertheless playfully anthropomorphic, simultaneously inviting and repelling potential use in their aluminum monumentality.

Eduardo Paolozzi (1924, Edinburgh – 2005, London), considered to be the “godfather of Pop Art”. He represented Britain at the 1960 Venice Biennale. A recent retrospective of Eduardo Paolozzi’s work was presented at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin.

Solo exhibitions of his work were held at the Tate, Royal Academy of Arts, Victoria and Albert Museum and Serpentine Gallery, all in London, as well as at MoMA, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and National Museum of Scotland, Edinburg.

His work has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Documenta II, Kassel, DE; Sao Paulo Biennial, BR; ICA, London, UK; and more recently, at White Cube, London, UK; Le Consortium, Dijon, FR.

Eduardo Paolozzi’s work is part of the collections of, amongst others, Tate, British Museum and Na-tional Portrait Gallery, London ; MoMA and Guggenheim, New York ; Art Institute of Chicago ; Dallas Museum of Art ; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis ; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam ; Nationalgalerie, Berlin ; Pinakothek, Munich ; Ludwig Museum, Cologne.