Ignacio Pardo

Known for

Directing

Born

January 1, 1947

Birthplace

Lugo, Galicia, Spain

BA in Fine Arts from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Teaches Drawing in Secondary Education Centres. He was lecturer in Audiovisual and Multimedia Languages at the Scola de Imaxe e Son de A Coruña. In 1985 he replaces his painting brushes for electronic tools, and develops his art work in the field of video art, video installations and digital art. He participates in Arco 88, Arco 89 and many other Spanish and international shows (Hannover, Arnheim, Utrecht, Rennes, Cannes, Ljubljana, Naples, Sydney, Graz, Kassel, Berlin, Innsbruck, Sao Paolo, Helsinki, Lynz, Moscow, etc.). Ignacio Pardo is one of the pioneers of video art in Galicia and in Spain. His video work revolves around the classic themes of Eros and Thanatos. The most present motifs in his work refer to the putrefaction of the meat, generally through flies or other eschatological elements, the viscera or blood. He is also interested in suffering and pain, reflected either through nails that wound the flesh, scissors that amputate it, or through a frantic montage, violent at times, that makes images collide in the human eye. The erotic and the sexual are shown in a rather biological way, without resorting to pornographic or sensual images: sexuality as a natural element is present in his work (both penetration and sexual organs), but generally wrapped in a humorous tone that nullifies their erotic potentiality and end up generating an abstract perception of the sexual in a level close to the contingent: everything, absolutely everything, will end up dying and sex continues to be the origin of more death. However, he is not framed within a saddening current, in the baroque way of tempus fugit, but rather, with a lot of humour, there is at the center of his work a great joy for living: as if he were reaching an illuminating vision of reality, of back from life, and - knowing and accepting extinction as a natural part of life - he decided to live uninhibited, celebrating every moment, including the instinctual and the lascivious in the normality of life, away from puritanical orthodoxies.