Opening Reception Thursday, 18 October, 6 – 7.30pm • Curated by Michele Horrigan

Argentine artist Magdalena Jitrik presents a series of photographs and videoworks in a solo exhibition at the Belltable. For several years, her multidisciplinary approach blurs the boundaries between a variety of mediums. Frequently using the process of painting as a starting point and questioning its’ position as a stable fixed object hanging on a gallery wall, her artworks fluctuate a perceived version of what an artistic gesture might consist of.

Take, for example, Pintura en Askeaton (Painting in Askeaton). In 2009, during her stay at Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Jitrik spent time making a small painting that, according to curator Adriano Pedrosa, “is a splendid abstract geometric composition, one can see the same mosaic of multicoloured slanted rectangles forming a larger, again not so orthogonal square, which in turn is intersected by a trapezoid figure, offering a feast for the formal connoisseur.” With such praise, Jitrik’s work could be considered akin to a Mondrian or a work of Russian Constructivism. Yet, she subtly shifts these expectations of her work away to another discursive platform, as a video details the painting’s growth and development from a blank canvas to a completed artwork, accompanied by a soundtrack by Jitrik’s band, Orquestra Roja (Red Orchestra). In another moment, the painting appears in the ruins of a local Franciscan Abbey, almost as an apparition amongst gravestones and medieval stone carvings, urgently captured in photographs and video excerpts.

In the photographs of Punta Lara (2012), a series of paintings appear in sequence on the branches of a tree as evening begins. On the dual screens of International Lantern (2012), films of Jitrik’s travels play beside depictions of sculptural forms moving to the rhythm of Orquestra Roja. As she reflects on the fluidity of her practice, Jitrik repositions the artist’s studio back into the everyday and nature. She places everything into a wheel of motion, gambling with every moment to see what might be next on a trajectory of persuasive presence and poetic clarity.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Magdalena Jitrik presents a workshop on her practice at Limerick City Gallery of Art on Thursday, October 18 at 2pm. Free admission and all are welcome.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1966, Magdalena Jitrik has exhibited comprehensively in museums and galleries throughout South America, along with Creative Time, New York. In Europe, she has featured in exhibitions such as the Istanbul Biennale in 2011 and Manifesta 9, Genk, Belgium in 2012. A solo presentation of her artworks with Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires occurs at Frieze Art Fair, London this month. Following a residency at Askeaton Contemporary Arts, County Limerick in 2009, this is her first solo exhibition in Ireland.

The Belltable, 69 O’Connell Street, Limerick was established in 1981 as the first regional arts centre in Ireland. The arts centre is multidisciplinary, with a programme of theatre, dance, visual arts, music, film and comedy.