Estudio Debajo del Sombrero
Group exhibition by Ángel Jesús Sastre, Marina Sacaluga, Miguel Ángel Suesta, Marta Páramo
Estudio Debajo del Sombrero
Group exhibition by Ángel Jesús Sastre, Marina Sacaluga, Miguel Ángel Suesta, Marta Páramo
20 June - 26 July 2024
Credits
Abel García
Abel García
Lola Barrera, Luis Sáez
Goro Studio
Dossier
DownloadThis exhibition arises as a result of a careful approach to the body of work developed over 16 years by the Estudio Debajo del Sombrero.
With curiosity and wonder, I have undertaken the task of compiling this collection of works; my surprise builds as I understand them as the expression of a group of artists with an extremely clear condition to face the truth from an other-place and a non-time, teaching us to perceive a reality without polish or wrapping (to recognize its fundamental and inexorable essence). “A kind of nothing that floats before the word; a nothing that is not emptiness but an amplitude of words”. [1]
Ángel Jesús Sastre (Madrid, 1970)
With a production centered on prototypes of humble materials and drawings on paper, Ángel is an architect emancipated from the entanglements of functionality and feasibility. His constructions, which are piled-up tomes of rooms, chambers, and furniture buried in glue, and the drawings of urban landscapes he knows, practice a sort of memorial architecture in which one returns to a more emotional plane of existence. It is, perhaps, a return to the origin, the refuge, the cabin, or a confirmation toward oneself, to obsessively store and record the root time of memory.
Marina Sacaluga (Madrid, 1986)
Marina's accelerated orbits are understood in the possibility of their ensemble. They represent nothing. Nothing beyond their immediate presence. All their content is there, condensed in the nakedness of their impromptu, shining through their pure presence. Marina's scribbles are those of a prolonged compulsion (the pencil on the paper), and we witness the event of an erosion, only broken by the pencil tip that snaps. Then the color changes, grading, emulsifying a glow that clings neither to space, geometry, nor image, but to a sensation of flow, of a fleeting and pure time. The elliptical energy of a cable coiled a million times by an electric current.
Miguel Ángel Suesta (Barcelona, 1963)
In Miguel Ángel's drawings, there is a palpable issue regarding the place from which they are made. They are lesbian interactions that Ángel reproduces as a voyeur in the dim light of a room. It is the eventuality of the fantasy that precisely disturbs in his work: a total lack of reference to the expectations of society. It is a potential narrative made in and on the very margins of culture, where the connotations that can be extracted (or not) are irrelevant. The images of the chimera have nothing to do with reality; it is the place where fiction subordinates the norm.
Marta Páramo (Madrid, 1993)
It is touch, not sight, the experience of sensitivity. Marta's approach (which is also absence) to these still-lifes reveals a telluric and velvety caress. The capacity of her work to return us to everyday life with a certain novelty has to do with a reflective detachment, undoubtedly sensitive nevertheless. Otherwise, she could not reach something truly intimate. The charcoal trace is not the mark of the action but the frugal trail left by Marta as she passes by.
*
Since our opening and due to the close approach we have had to painting, at El Chico we have been exploring the concept of creation in painting for some time now. We have delved from various viewpoints and perspectives—the painters we have worked with—into what it means to paint, the pictorial act, the void, and the conclusions we draw from all this. The intention of this project with the Estudio Debajo del Sombrero continues within the search for these questions, which we know in advance we will never resolve—or rather, each painter will believe to solve them fleetingly at different moments in their practices. We were interested in approaching the practices of the Estudio Debajo del Sombrero from the pictorial work itself and not from curatorial judgment; therefore, it is an artist who has undertaken the task not only of selecting but of confronting these practices, so stripped of prejudices and duties that in many cases leave us with more questions than answers. It is the artists who can best understand these signs because, ultimately, the pictorial cannot (truly) be explained with words.
We are very grateful for the collaboration of Lola Barrera and Luis Sáez and also for the wonder and enthusiasm of Abel García.
[1] Panero, L. M. (2005). Leopoldo María Panero: Antología poética. Visor de Poesía, n.° 989.
With curiosity and wonder, I have undertaken the task of compiling this collection of works; my surprise builds as I understand them as the expression of a group of artists with an extremely clear condition to face the truth from an other-place and a non-time, teaching us to perceive a reality without polish or wrapping (to recognize its fundamental and inexorable essence). “A kind of nothing that floats before the word; a nothing that is not emptiness but an amplitude of words”. [1]
Ángel Jesús Sastre (Madrid, 1970)
With a production centered on prototypes of humble materials and drawings on paper, Ángel is an architect emancipated from the entanglements of functionality and feasibility. His constructions, which are piled-up tomes of rooms, chambers, and furniture buried in glue, and the drawings of urban landscapes he knows, practice a sort of memorial architecture in which one returns to a more emotional plane of existence. It is, perhaps, a return to the origin, the refuge, the cabin, or a confirmation toward oneself, to obsessively store and record the root time of memory.
Marina Sacaluga (Madrid, 1986)
Marina's accelerated orbits are understood in the possibility of their ensemble. They represent nothing. Nothing beyond their immediate presence. All their content is there, condensed in the nakedness of their impromptu, shining through their pure presence. Marina's scribbles are those of a prolonged compulsion (the pencil on the paper), and we witness the event of an erosion, only broken by the pencil tip that snaps. Then the color changes, grading, emulsifying a glow that clings neither to space, geometry, nor image, but to a sensation of flow, of a fleeting and pure time. The elliptical energy of a cable coiled a million times by an electric current.
Miguel Ángel Suesta (Barcelona, 1963)
In Miguel Ángel's drawings, there is a palpable issue regarding the place from which they are made. They are lesbian interactions that Ángel reproduces as a voyeur in the dim light of a room. It is the eventuality of the fantasy that precisely disturbs in his work: a total lack of reference to the expectations of society. It is a potential narrative made in and on the very margins of culture, where the connotations that can be extracted (or not) are irrelevant. The images of the chimera have nothing to do with reality; it is the place where fiction subordinates the norm.
Marta Páramo (Madrid, 1993)
It is touch, not sight, the experience of sensitivity. Marta's approach (which is also absence) to these still-lifes reveals a telluric and velvety caress. The capacity of her work to return us to everyday life with a certain novelty has to do with a reflective detachment, undoubtedly sensitive nevertheless. Otherwise, she could not reach something truly intimate. The charcoal trace is not the mark of the action but the frugal trail left by Marta as she passes by.
*
Since our opening and due to the close approach we have had to painting, at El Chico we have been exploring the concept of creation in painting for some time now. We have delved from various viewpoints and perspectives—the painters we have worked with—into what it means to paint, the pictorial act, the void, and the conclusions we draw from all this. The intention of this project with the Estudio Debajo del Sombrero continues within the search for these questions, which we know in advance we will never resolve—or rather, each painter will believe to solve them fleetingly at different moments in their practices. We were interested in approaching the practices of the Estudio Debajo del Sombrero from the pictorial work itself and not from curatorial judgment; therefore, it is an artist who has undertaken the task not only of selecting but of confronting these practices, so stripped of prejudices and duties that in many cases leave us with more questions than answers. It is the artists who can best understand these signs because, ultimately, the pictorial cannot (truly) be explained with words.
We are very grateful for the collaboration of Lola Barrera and Luis Sáez and also for the wonder and enthusiasm of Abel García.
[1] Panero, L. M. (2005). Leopoldo María Panero: Antología poética. Visor de Poesía, n.° 989.
Available artworks
Untitled I, 2021
Untitled II, 2023
Untitled III, 2023
Untitled IV, 2023
Untitled V, 2021
Untitled VI, 2021
Untitled I, 2016
Untitled II, 2016
Untitled IV, 2016
Untitled V, 2016
Untitled I, 2020
Untitled II, 2018
Untitled III, 2020
Untitled IV, 2020
Untitled V, 2012
Untitled VI, 2020
Untitled VII, 2016
Untitled VIII, 2016
