Abdul Vas
AC/DC 40th Anniversary
September 4–27, 2014
Opening: September, 4, 6pm
Galeria Senda
C/ Consell de Cent, 337
E-08007 Barcelona
Spain
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11am–8pm
T (+34) 934 876 759
info [at] galeriasenda.com
AC/DC celebrates its 40th anniversary. Abdul Vas (born 1981, Maracay, Venezuela; lives and works between Madrid and Amsterdam) dedicates the main part of his artistic work to the Australian hardrock group AC/DC. His devotion to this legendary band has resulted in a committed vital position and an aesthetics, that runs parallel to the general artistic establishment.
AC/DC 40th Anniversary—Abdul Vas’s first solo show at Galeria Senda, originated as a tribute and homage to one band. This band that means much more than only music to the artist: “For me, as an absolute AC/DC fan, it would be absurd to say that AC/DC, The Rolling Stones, Muddy Waters, Pink Floyd or Procol Harum are just rock bands. These bands have exceeded the limits of music to a great extent and are thousands of light years ahead of the visual culture from the past decades.” In this sense, Abdul Vas questions the limits of contemporary art, following his obsession with AC/DC and creating his own, marginalized formula within the art system.
AC/DC’s immense power potential appears everywhere in Vas’s paintings, drawings and collages: energetic portraits of the band members, drawings of the performing band onstage and personified, big-scaled triptychs of the Navistar-Trucks, in which the artist merges logos and symbols from popular culture with the band’s own insignia. All of these works build a universe of contemporary mythology, rebellion and power and demonstrate Abdul Vas’s absolute devotion to one of the most popular rock’n’roll bands of our history.
Belgian artist Abdul Vas was born 1981 in Maracay, Venezuela but grew up living between Surinam, Guyana and Belgium. He studied Fine Arts at EAVRA, Maracay, and later at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. The artist has created handmade books and zines, photographs, collages, drawings, paintings, murals and sculptures. Since 2004, the artist has realized several solo exhibitions for galleries in Europe and the Americas, and has participated in many group exhibitions. In 2009, he was selected for the Beijing Biennale; in the same year, he exhibited My 57 States AC/DC (Georgetown, Guyana). Since 2010, he has been working on the project North-American Truckers and AC/DC Power, exhibited at Disk Union (Tokyo, Japan). Abdul Vas lives and works in Amsterdam and Madrid.
