This exhibition aims to track the careers and positions of five artists whose work has been in progress from the late eighties to present-day.
This exhibition, curated by Peio Aguirre and Beatriz Herráez, aims to track the careers and positions of five artists whose work has been in progress from the late eighties to present-day. The sequence "Arenzana Imaz Intxausti Montón Peral" forms a phrase intertwined with surnames, and also a rich sum of visual and formal images. Those are their surnames. Their names, Miren, Iñaki, Gem, Idoia and Alberto; another nominal sequence that re-joins work to encounter, dialogue and collaboration. Five artists, five voices.
A common feature of these artists is that they belong to a generation that studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Leioa (UPV/EHU) complementing their training with courses and stays at the Arteleku centre in Donostia. It is important to set that moment in context as a moment in which the artists come to a renewal of artistic languages, chasing a continuation and alternative to the so-called "New Basque Sculpture". The historic character of this exhibition is complemented by a contemporary portrait of the same artists.
The exhibition is organized around two main areas, two ships located on the first floor of the Tabakalera building, which present on the one hand, works made since the nineties, and on the other works produced specifically for this exhibition over nearly 18 months. Instead of each of these positions involving a retrospective in miniature, it seeks to map an artistic corpus where a point of departure and one of arrival prefigure the image of a "work", understood as the compendium of an artist’s aesthetic identity. A concentrated look at each position deeply reveals the artistic development of each of those represented.
Painting and sculpture are the languages with greater presence, together with works where the written word appears with drawings, photography and design. In all these languages there underlies a strong analytical component of the environmental conditions of the chosen medium, either through the use of metalanguage or a subtle deconstruction of the artistic "object" that reaffirms a narrative, poetic and symbolic will. The formal and conceptual experimentation performed by each of these artists reaffirms art as a territory for experience and knowledge. The exhibition thus traces a journey through different aesthetic positions that propose a contextual X-ray from contemporary production. The work of Miren Arenzana, Gema Intxausti, Iñaki Imaz, Idoia Montón and Alberto Peral offers an overview of the visual arts in the last three decades that allows us to look critically at the recent past and appreciate what has been done, and what it is offered to us as current and/or contemporary.
Documentation
ORRIAK. PUBLICATION THAT ACCOMPANIES THE EXHIBITION:
Read it on Issuu: Orriak - 2
PDF download: Orriak - 2 (pdf - 1.4mb)