When the famous art gallery owner Juana de Aizpuru, a pioneer of contemporary art collecting in Spain, made room for him between exhibitions of renowned artists, the young Chus Burés, who had recently arrived in Madrid from Barcelona, could not imagine that the opportunity would present itself Showing his works The First Jewels took him to the same heights as Louise Bourgeois or Carmen Herrera, two artists with whom he immediately began to collaborate. It was 1985, a time of creative resurgence in the Spanish capital, and Burés, then 22, distinguished himself as a restless, exuberant talent who, decades later, refined his work with maturity but with the same nonconformity.
Collectors from around the world, particularly from the United States and France, own his works, and now, coinciding with an exhibition in his Madrid studio developed in collaboration with architect and Columbia University professor Juan Herreros, he is showing his most creative side (“less constrained by the demands of the market,” he explains) at the Americas Society in New York: he is the first Spanish artist to whom the society opens its spaces. The New York exhibition is entitled Art as ornament: Chus Burés and Latin American Artists in Collaboration and runs until May 18, 2024. The selection of Burés jewelry is the epilogue to an interesting two-part exhibition entitled Eldorado: Myths of Gold, with reviews and reinterpretations from more than 70 artists from Latin America.
Burés’ relationship with the United States dates back to the mid-1980s: the creator was always precocious and groundbreaking at the same time. Burés’ jewels, exhibited in the institution’s library, provide a retrospective not only of his career, but also of the most important trends in Latin American art of the last decades. From his collaboration with the kinetic artist Jesús Rafael Soto, to the consecrated Carmen Herrera, to the Cuban Kcho, with whom he designed two beautiful allegories of the desire to escape the island: a winged boat and a branch ending in a paddle Ruder Other artists featured in Art as Ornament include Antonio Asís, Tony Bechara, Carlos Cruz-Díez, Sérvulo Esmeraldo, Macaparana and Marie Orensanz, to name a few.
“This exhibition shows the most experimental part of my work,” explains Burés in New York, one of the three cities in which he works (the others are Madrid and Paris). “By collaborating with artists, parameters such as costs or investments that determine the production of jewelry for the market can be avoided. You can play with the most experimental part, and there is a collection that is looking for exactly this type of jewelry, that wants something original. “It is a market of demanding customers who value the idea, the pure creation, because what interests me is the exchange, the dialogue with the artist.” This and his obsession with “creating wearable art” explain his commitment to conceptually improve the jewelry he created.
Burés has a loyal following of collectors, particularly in the United States and France. In Spain, his work in Catalonia is very successful. His relationship with his customer friends also goes beyond the usual business relationship and becomes a further homage to art. An elegant book to be browsed in the New York exhibition portrays his creations, worn by artists and fellow collectors as if they were decorations rather than jewels. Featuring photographs by Andrés Serrano and Antoine d’Agata, the volume begins with the 2015 image that immortalizes the venerable Carmen Herrera as matriarch, with the geometric brooch she designed as Burés fastens her scarf. The book is also a celebration of the friendship, or at least the special, intimate relationship that develops between the creators.
After studying interior design in his hometown of Barcelona and learning jewelry making in various workshops in the Catalan capital and Madrid, Burés worked with unusual and unconventional materials such as industrial waste, metals and recyclable objects of different shapes and origins. But the exhibition at Juana de Aizpuru’s gallery, a selection of silver works, made him give up experimentation, although the urge to innovate never left him. He defines himself as a “multi-material sculptor”. In 1985, film director Pedro Almodóvar commissioned him to make the hairpin and murder weapon for his film Matador, a silver treble clef inspired by Andalusian window bars – which opened his doors to the international market. Nowadays, his studio in New York’s Chelsea district is one of those secret and coveted addresses that is passed from hand to hand in his inner circle.
Five years later, in 1990, Burés finally sealed his love affair with New York with his contribution to the wedding trousseau of a unique marriage: the wedding of the Statue of Liberty and the Columbus Monument in Barcelona, a project by the Catalan artist Antoni Miralda in the Spanish pavilion the 44th Venice Art Biennale. Since this wedding, Burés has felt like a true New Yorker. His latest exhibition in the heart of Manhattan confirms that he is.
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