We are pleased to announce very special project the gallery has been working on along with Spanish curator Sofia Corrales. An exhibition gathering a group of Madrid-based artists and their approach towards the pictorial and artistic processes. The show exhibits artworks by: Álvaro Ferreira, Blanca Guerrero, Violeta Maya, Javier Montoro, Maru Quiñonero, Mateo Revillo and Maria Yelletisch.
'If there is, at this juncture, a renewed concern with the idea of the medium, it is due to the rising in- terest in making and materiality that in turn, stems from the recognition of the material and technical register of the work of art as the very site rather than a mere support of meaning' – Graw, I., Painting beyond itself. The Medium in the Post-medium Condition, Sternberg Press, 2016
A site presents the work of seven artists whose production starts from the pictorial discipline, opens its margins and reimagines its scope. The title alludes to a particular geographical area, the city of Madrid, to which all the artists are strongly linked. In par- allel, following the proposal of the historian I. Graw, the exhibition proposes the idea of the "site" as an alternative way of thinking about the work and its process; ultimately unlinked to an intention of meaning and relevant to the processes, dynamics or spaces that it can house.
We live in a daily explosion of images and information; painting may be losing its sym- bolic force. However, no other medium is able to so directly fuse vision and touch to give form to what is happening in a concrete mind and body. Abandoning the debate about the end of painting, the challenge is perhaps to think of a different approach to its "specificity"1; only a plural and complex approach can elude reductivist attacks and channel its relevance today.
Far from offering an ultimate hypothesis that seeks to explain painting today, A site is an invitation to approach each work from a its intrinsic event, paying attention to what is happening on the surface -but also in its support, in its spatial unfolding, in the mind that projects it, in the body that creates it and in the eye that moves through it.
The works presented are all produced between 2022 and 2023. All the artists present a two-dimensional work and another that is more sculptural, installation, or that expands in some way their usual work or technique. Through them, we can look at a generational condition and at certain issues as universal as they are typical of our times: dislocation and reconciliation with identity, the complex relationship with uncertainty, geographical separation, travel, nostalgia. At the same time, the artists included speak of "material as device" or "collaborations with the medium"; expressions that direct attention to a renewed agency of gesture and material.
Alvaro Ferreira (Madrid, 1990) presents a series of two site-specific installations and wall pieces in which he uses tiles as a material. On a technical level, Ferreria's work is based on a training in design. In recent years he has developed a recognisable style of line; a strong, fast, broken line, with which he draws different motifs, above all, he writes. His work has a strong interest in language, its saturation through digital media and social networks, and the way in which this has been transformed into something superfluous, devoid of meaning. Ferreira's lyrics are full of little breaks and also, as we see in the series "I will destroy your world", totally out of order. In this series the artist explores the relationship that has blossomed with his twin brother over the years, underlying the complexities of the formation of one's own identity. What appear to be abstract lines are actually the physical deconstruction of written phrases, applied directly onto the tiles.
Blanca Guerrero (1990, Madrid) presents three recent paintings and a series of photo- graphs. Her work moves between different techniques and always starts from a visual and sensorial experience, which the artist tries to recreate. Through an exercise of re- membrance and recreation, Guerrero rescues the image of certain moments in her life, al- most always in nature, moments that have had a strong impact on her. By returning to her studio, the artist tries to perpetuate the sensorial character of fleeting phenomena such as the glare of the sun, the darkness of the night, the different tones of the twilight, the veils of fog, or the light on the surface of water. His aspiration is always to give physical dimension to a perception; an effort to capture the ephemeral experience of observing.
The paintings, in dark tones, try to recover the vision of ponds or lakes at night. Imprecise spaces of enigmatic depth; the absence of light confuses figure and frame, as well as the exterior or interior position of the observer.
Violeta Maya (Madrid, 1993) presents a canvas and, for the first time - expanding her work towards the spatial and textile - an installation of ink on silk cloths. Maya's paint- ing is an immediate and direct channel through which the artist shapes her emotional landscape of the moment. Her process incorporates the material qualities of pigment as well as those of the medium itself. Maya exposes these elements (the pigment and the canvas) to uncontrollable factors such as humidity - by soaking the canvases before painting - and time, which marks the drying and the end of each work. Thus, his is a conscious and double exercise where the projection of a sensation and the contingency dictated by other material and uncontrollable forces, the intention of an image and its result impregnated with chance.
In the installation Maya superimposes eight painted canvases. In this work the artist expands her practice into a format that emphasises key aspects of her painting; random- ness and movement. The light or the breeze are factors that constantly condition and modify her colour and form, generating infinite versions of the final result.
Javier Montoro (Madrid, 194) presents in this exhibition a painting and a sculpture-furniture. His work frequently takes existing forms, objects and codes that already exist and belong to the urban context–such as signposting tapes or geometrical patterns taken from seats in public transport–and subverts or cancels them, proposing new and mixed visual rules. The result is often geometric, playful, sometimes serial. "Grids, bands and fractions of flat colours derived from computer-generated patterns are interspersed with adhesive tapes, digital prints and drawings, combining geometric formalism with the found object in cryptic and scenic assemblages.
From the central sculpture presented in this exhibition (D.C.7, 2022) we can understand many aspects of his work. Made of laminated board, MDF, pine wood, screen-printed bus upholstery, plastic bus handle and hardware, this piece shows a way of making and thinking that the artist has developed over last few years, and which is transversal in his practice, regardless of format or size. His work is the result of the combination of assemblages of industrial materials with plastic interventions, incorporating and recycling scraps, discards and discarded objects. The artist overlaps layers, distorts established geometrical languages, and finally creates new hybrid pieces where these codes and objects collapse and are reborn.
Mateo Revillo (Madrid, 1993) exhibits a new large wall piece and several small works in wax poured on concrete. His work traverses and collapses a long timeline; in his works we find influences of archaic muralism with minimalist and conceptual gestures. Revillo starts from an initial geometric unit and breaks it down into fragments, which expand and unfold on the wall. An exercise in mathematics and unfolding that generates new spaces, and at the same time opens up like a crack or debris from the past.
Each square or rectangular plasterboard is worked as if it were a bas-relief. A layer of cement is applied on top, a second skin which is then painted in encaustic (melted beeswax mixed with pigments). In the end, this first piece is broken and the different blocks climb and expand, the work acquiring an open format, a new organic form. With a superimposition of completely unique techniques and materials, and from a more mystical than intellectual place, Revillo's work proposes a painting that tells its own story and creates its own space.
Maru Quiñonero (1979, Murcia. Lives and works in Madrid) presents three works of pencil on paper. Quiñonero's work approaches abstraction from a personal and emotional perspective; the artist proposes this language as an intimate way of working with her reality. By disassociating realism from figuration, Quiñonero argues that colour and form can be more faithful to a precise idea than a narrative or explicit language.
His drawings often depict vibrant encounters between blocks of colour, entities that approach and recede with an approaching and receding with an unsettling internal speed. Like a moment of pause in a dance, these rounded forms want to approach and exist together while asserting their uniqueness with a careful stroke, with a measured repetition and precise line. In larger formats, such as the one presented in the exhibition, Quiñonero creates powerful individual forms, in which a large size and presence coexist with a systematic, slow and delicate process. Thus, after an initial encounter with firm, outlined stains, the viewer is invited to become acquainted with the intrinsic event of the work, the very history of its configuration. Through a slow journey we can access the artist's own gestural - and temporal - register.
María Yelletisch (Barcelona, 1987. Lives and works in Madrid) shows new ceramics and two oil paintings. The artist bases much of her work on the practice of repetition and understands this action as an almost meditative act. After an initial selection of colours, which she takes from specific landscapes and personal experiences in nature, Yelletisch selects the colours and begins a process of repetitive trance in which he applies them all at once, completing the work in a single batch, usually on the same day - in short brushstrokes or looping strokes. From the upper left to the lower right corner. Yelletisch speaks of his creative process as a place of productive contradiction; a place where he wants to enter and from where he wants to exit, closely linked to his state of mind; intimate, open spaces where time is repetition, haste translates into quick strokes and and rhythm marks the landscape.
Press release courtesy Alzueta Gallery.
