A152: 'Djelikani' 230 x 300 cms

JAIME GILI

“An excessive visuality of the explosion or crash” - David Ryan / Artpapers

“A reconfiguration of the essence of moment with a blast” - Sacha Craddock / Jerwood space catalogue

Jaime Gili was born in Caracas (Venezuela) in 1972. He grew up in a multicultural capital full of vibrant optical art, a concrete city full of optimism. Caracas, in the late seventies, presented its own version of the International modernism movement in art and architecture. Its own take on Utopia, the look of the city being created by artists and architects working together towards a single vision underwritten by a strong oil economy.

By the time Gili began his art studies in Prodiseño, Caracas in 1988, he was witnessing the willful destruction, dismantling and ruin of some of the city’s major institutions, its architecturally important buildings and its urban, public art.

Moving to Europe (with his newly claimed EU passport) in 1990, Gili lived and studied in Barcelona, where he concluded his BA in 1995 and a PhD from Universidad de Barcelona on ‘Repetition in Art’ in 2000. He also studied in Lisbon, Paris and Berlin. Jaime Gili has been based in London since 1996, when he began his studies at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1998.

Gili is currently engaged in several series of paintings, curatorial projects and photographic works that reference historical and peripheral modern movements. His aim is to resurrect for the present the positive elements which served as a source of creative energy as he grew up. To bring about a new way to think Utopia. An ability to dream and be able to project and execute that dream.

In his latest work Gili depicts this imagined state, using signature forms which recall the best moments of modern abstraction, thereby creating a clash between imagined Utopia and reality.

In the last year, during two residencies and an Arts Council fellowship, Gili has developed various projects which link artists and art groups in Europe and Latin America, including two public poster series. Recent exhibitions include the experimental series of shows curated by Paul O’Neill Coalesce: at Redux, London 2005 and Modelarts and Niland Gallery, Sligo, 2004. Jaime Gili will have a solo show at Riflemaker in November 2005.

Work exhibited in Expander, Royal Academy of Arts (Curated by Mustafa Hulusi), London

PR’04 ‘Tribute to the Messenger’, Puerto Rico, 2004

Salón Cantv, Ateneo de Caracas, 2004

RUPT, Jerwood Space, London, 2003

EAST International, Norwich, 1999

He is the co-director of International Style, a network of artist-run spaces in blocks of flats and is invited regularly to lecture in English Universities and Art Schools. In his spare time Jaime Gili is the London correspondent for LAPIZ, the arts magazine based in Madrid.

Jaime Gili 'Ruta Rota' - an installation at 5 Cheapside, London, (St Pauls Tube station) and 250 bus stops across the capital(London Architecture Biennale Route)

RUTA ROTA RUNS UNTIL THE END OF SEPTEMBER

www.londonbiennale.org.uk

JAIME GILI

'Superestrellas'

(b.1972, Caracas)

11 February 2008

In 2005 Jaime Gili caused traffic chaos in London's Oxford Street with the 700,000 triangular pieces he installed in Selfridges store windows. In 2006 he created the six mile 'Ruta Rota' (broken route), an installation of buses from Southwark Cathedral to St.Paul's.

Gili's paintings are named after "those who have swept through my life like a hurricane". Friends who are literally 'superestrellas', (superstars), their impact and their identities frozen within the explosive, cubed icicles embedded in this series of celebratory canvases.

"Jaime Gili's work is as if someone threw a stone into a Cruz-Diez painting" (Jesus Fuenmayor, curator)

'Jaime Gili Superstars' opens at Riflemaker Soho Square, 11 February 2008