AutoGelsen
Gelsen Gas
During the early 1970s, Gelsen Gas produced experimental films, paintings, collages, and logic puzzles, in addition to practicing a genre of painting that prefigured elements of late-twentieth-century postmodern appropriationism. AutoGelsen moves beyond the plane of the painting to contradict the traditional terms of self-portraiture.
The piece is part of a series based on overlapping modern pictorial compositions (in this case, a reference to Homage to the Square [1964] by the German artist Josef Albers) with images rendered in different styles: for example, a realist landscape, a hyper-realist artist raising his fist, and a character sketched as a pop-art-style cartoon. Unlike a traditional self-portrait, this depiction of the artist has his back turned to the viewer, a gesture reinforced by placing a chair in front of the painting as if to suggest the painter’s position. A double set of signatures, in a font that parodies Walt Disney’s, is repeated in both mediums.
GELSEN GAS [ÁNGEL SÁNCHEZ GAS] (1933–2015)
AutoGelsen, 1971
Installation. Oil on canvas, chair, and embroidered denim jacket
Gift of the artist, 2008
