Pedro Barbeito

Pedro Barbeito (b. 1969 La Coruña, Spain) received a BA from Brandeis University in Boston in 1992; studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1992-1993; received an MFA in Painting from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1996; and was awarded the Louis Comfort Biennial Award in 1999. Selected exhibitions include, Within an Arrows Range, Charest Weinberg Gallery, Miami, NY (2010); Chapter 7: Wolf Tickets, Salon 94, New York, NY (2010); Data Panic, Cuchifritos, New York, NY (2009); Transitions: Painting at the (other) End of Art, Collezionne Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2009); Expanded Painting, Space Other, Boston (2008); Galerie Jean-Luc et Takako Richard, Paris, France (2008); Lehmann Maupin in New York (2005); Digital Landscapes: 1565/2002 at Lehmann Maupin in New York (2003); The Cooper Union in New York (2003); New Economy Painting at Acme Gallery in Los Angeles (2002); and Mario Diacano Gallery in Boston (2002). Selected awards and grants include the New York Foundation for the Arts (2002) and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award (1999). Pedro Barbeito lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Barbeito is represented by 101/Exhibit gallery in Los Angeles.

When Pedro Barbeito bought a computer in 1996, it became not only a tool in art making, but his muse and collaborator. For more than a decade, Barbeito has explored the impact of digital image making on the history and language of painting. By combining the imagery of painters such as Velazquez, Goya and Picasso with the digital imagery of news media, science Web sites and video games, Barbeito’s work investigates the historical shifts in how we represent the world we live in and the cultural and political implications of these forms of depicting. He has also explored the depiction of violence and terror in the media in a series of oval works relating to the recent war in Iraq. The work of Picasso and the fragmentation seen in both cubism and digital technologies is often referred to in his painting. The 2004 work, “An Attempt to Please,” is part of his body of work influenced by a trip to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona that combines the fragmentation of cubism with the cut and paste of digital imaging. Barbeito scanned drawings he made of his wife and himself into his computer and then used Photoshop to superimpose and manipulate them into images that reflect both a fractured cubist space as well as a fractured digital space. What is left is works that show the trials of communicating between two people – his wife and himself - as well as these related yet distant forms of representation – the digital and cubism - and the possible beauty and harmony of interconnecting.

For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art