GROUP EXHIBITION

'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 technicalregister 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 pictorialdiscipline, opens its margins and reimagines its scope. The title alludes to a particulargeographical 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 ofthe "site" as an alternative way of thinking about the work and its process; ultimatelyunlinked to an intention of meaning and relevant to the processes, dynamics or spacesthat 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 giveform to what is happening in a concrete mind and body.Abandoning the debate about the end of painting, the challenge is perhaps to think ofa different approach to its "specificity"1; only a plural and complex approach can eludereductivist attacks and channel its relevance today.

Far from offering an ultimate hypothesis that seeks to explain painting today, A site is aninvitation to approach each work from a its intrinsic event, paying attention to what ishappening on the surface -but also in its support, in its spatial unfolding, in the mind thatprojects 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 atwo-dimensional work and another that is more sculptural, installation, or that expandsin some way their usual work or technique. Through them, we can look at a generationalcondition and at certain issues as universal as they are typical of our times: dislocationand reconciliation with identity, the complex relationship with uncertainty, geographicalseparation, travel, nostalgia. At the same time, the artists included speak of "materialas device" or "collaborations with the medium"; expressions that direct attention to arenewed agency of gesture and material.

Alvaro Ferreira (Madrid, 1990) presents a series of two site-specific installations and wallpieces in which he uses tiles as a material. On a technical level, Ferreria's work is basedon a training in design. In recent years he has developed a recognisable style of line; astrong, fast, broken line, with which he draws different motifs, above all, he writes. Hiswork has a strong interest in language, its saturation through digital media and socialnetworks, 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 theseries "I will destroy your world", totally out of order. In this series the artist exploresthe relationship that has blossomed with his twin brother over the years, underlying thecomplexities of the formation of one's own identity. What appear to be abstract lines areactually 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 visualand 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 herstudio, the artist tries to perpetuate the sensorial character of fleeting phenomena suchas the glare of the sun, the darkness of the night, the different tones of the twilight, theveils of fog, or the light on the surface of water. His aspiration is always to give physicaldimension 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, aswell as the exterior or interior position of the observer.

Violeta Maya (Madrid, 1993) presents a canvas and, for the first time - expanding herwork 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 emotionallandscape of the moment. Her process incorporates the material qualities of pigmentas well as those of the medium itself. Maya exposes these elements (the pigment andthe canvas) to uncontrollable factors such as humidity - by soaking the canvases beforepainting - and time, which marks the drying and the end of each work. Thus, his is aconscious and double exercise where the projection of a sensation and the contingencydictated by other material and uncontrollable forces, the intention of an image and itsresult impregnated with chance.

In the installation Maya superimposes eight painted canvases. In this work the artistexpands 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 andmodify 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 andbelong to the urban context–such as signposting tapes or geometrical patterns takenfrom seats in public transport–and subverts or cancels them, proposing new and mixedvisual rules. The result is often geometric, playful, sometimes serial. "Grids, bands andfractions of flat colours derived from computer-generated patterns are interspersed withadhesive tapes, digital prints and drawings, combining geometric formalism with thefound object in cryptic and scenic assemblages.

From the central sculpture presented in this exhibition (D.C.7, 2022) we can understandmany aspects of his work. Made of laminated board, MDF, pine wood, screen-printedbus upholstery, plastic bus handle and hardware, this piece shows a way of making andthinking that the artist has developed over last few years, and which is transversal in hispractice, regardless of format or size. His work is the result of the combination of assemblages of industrial materials with plastic interventions, incorporating and recyclingscraps, discards and discarded objects. The artist overlaps layers, distorts establishedgeometrical languages, and finally creates new hybrid pieces where these codes andobjects collapse and are reborn.

Mateo Revillo (Madrid, 1993) exhibits a new large wall piece and several small works inwax poured on concrete. His work traverses and collapses a long timeline; in his workswe find influences of archaic muralism with minimalist and conceptual gestures. Revillostarts from an initial geometric unit and breaks it down into fragments, which expandand unfold on the wall. An exercise in mathematics and unfolding that generates newspaces, 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 moremystical than intellectual place, Revillo's work proposes a painting that tells its own storyand creates its own space.

Maru Quiñonero (1979, Murcia. Lives and works in Madrid) presents three works of pencilon 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 bemore 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 repetitionand 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 asystematic, slow and delicate process. Thus, after an initial encounter with firm, outlinedstains, 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'sown gestural - and temporal - register.

María Yelletisch (Barcelona, 1987. Lives and works in Madrid) shows new ceramics andtwo oil paintings.The artist bases much of her work on the practice of repetition and understands thisaction as an almost meditative act. After an initial selection of colours, which she takesfrom 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 brushstrokesor looping strokes. From the upper left to the lower right corner. Yelletisch speaks of hiscreative process as a place of productive contradiction; a place where he wants to enterand 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 thelandscape.