GROUP EXHIBITION

Pictorial abstraction has shifted over time within the history of art, moving from the avant-gardes of the 20th century to a broad and heterogeneous contemporary territory. More than a style, it has become a way of thinking painting: a field where the image is no longer dependent on representation but is activated through gesture, color, matter, and rhythm.

In this shift, painting has steadily affirmed its autonomy. From early breaks with figuration to contemporary practices, abstraction has opened a field in which the pictorial surface becomes a site of experience, rather than a window onto an external world. In this sense, when Piet Mondrian stated that “abstract art is not the creation of another reality but the true version of reality,” he was not introducing an opposition between worlds, but rather a way of situating painting within a more essential experience, freed from the need to describe the visible.

The works brought together in this exhibition participate in this expanded field. In them, painting is not fixed as a final image but unfolds as process, accumulation, or tension. Color acts as force, gesture as impulse, repetition as latent structure. Each artist articulates a different way of inhabiting this condition: from chromatic vibration, systemic construction, accumulated matter, or intuitive order.

For Claudia Valsells (Barcelona, Spain, 1969), color is the core of her practice, understood as both structural and sensorial force. Her works arise from chromatic relationships in which intuition, action, and technical knowledge converge. In these subtle modulations, color becomes a presence that alters and guides perception.

With Aythamy Armas (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, 1977), the line, detached from any narrative, becomes an impulse that traverses the surface and transforms it into a network of relations in motion. Painting is presented as an autonomous reality that does not describe but manifests itself in its own materiality.

In another direction, María Yelletisch (Barcelona, Spain, 1987) develops a practice grounded in repetition, subtlety, and time. Through light layers and restrained gestures, landscapes appear to expand, evoking natural rhythms, memory, and silence. Her works open a space of quiet, almost suspended contemplation.

In the case of Berni Puig (Barcelona, Spain, 1985), abstraction emerges through a process in which landscape and the memory of place dissolve into matter, trace, and color. Through techniques of extraction and superimposition, a chromatic and compositional imprint takes shape, echoing what has been, what remains, and what is yet to come.

The compositions of Manolo Ballesteros (Barcelona, Spain, 1965) arise from subtle brushstrokes that construct precise geometric structures guided by intuition, in a constant balance between restraint and expansion. His works do not respond to any narrative but unfold as a direct experience between form, matter, and perception.

For Enrich.R (Igualada, Spain, 2001), painting is constructed as a sedimentation of time and processes. Layers, textures, and traces preserve the memory of making. Imperfection and accumulation are not accidental but the foundation of a practice that understands painting as a constantly transforming organism.

Finally, Alexander Wertheim (Wertheim, Germany, 1995) explores the friction between order and intuition. The systems of repetition and variation he implements give rise to open structures, where the initial gesture transforms into rhythm and visual architecture. His practice inhabits this unstable threshold between system and freedom, between construction and internal vibration.

Together in a single exhibition, each artist reveals abstraction as a territory of possibility: a place where art thinks, breathes, and transforms. Between chromatic vibration, material density, repetition, and structure, each work opens a singular way of inhabiting the surface and activating a sensory experience that transcends the image.