Sin fin
Solo show by Irene Anguita
Sin fin
Solo show by Irene Anguita
21 February - 31 March 2023
Credits
Elena Feduchi
We have closely followed Irene Anguita’s work in the two years since her inclusion in the first edition of el Chico’s Adentro/Afuera. That group show was followed by her first solo exhibition, and we have continued to be mesmerized by the evolution of her pictorial practice.
Facing her painting continues to raise a sense of mystery, but now with a greater intensity, derived from a more mature practice. For those who know her work in-depth, this evolution will appear more evident, and those meeting her for the first time will see that the work comes from an extended process. While her interests remain the same, the question is how to drive her practice into unfamiliar places. Irene’s pace is relentless, even so, her exacting standards do not allow her to accept all that she produces. An artist's language is composed of conceptual factors – even metaphysical – as well as tangible elements, which create a technique bound to the matter; we dare to say that it is in this materiality where Irene finds fertile ground to continue confronting her own work from the most honest place possible.
In her first solo show in 2021, Todas las fiestas del mañana (All tomorrow’s parties), her painting orbited around celebrations that could not happen because of the abrupt confinement of the pandemic. In that vast body of work, Painting was at the service of an interpretation of a youth trapped in a melancholy but without sadness as well as the more technical question on how to transfer a digital medium to the canvas (many of the works were based on photographs). In SIN FIN we meet again with the ecstasy of that youth, but we no longer can bring them into focus so clearly, it is as if the fervor is now at the service of painting itself. The freedom and risk that Irene assumes in this new body of work are proportional to the emotion caused by looking at them. Not fully understanding what is happening before our eyes does not diminish the power of the feeling. Irene – like many of her peers – has stopped painting under the common figurative vs. abstract duality, and when she is asked why, her answer is almost indecipherable for anyone who is not a painter or an artist. This decision not to settle into a single ‘style’ has to do with an innate willingness to take risks. If we are all concerned with the same problems, the way to find different solutions will be through the risks we take in trying to solve them – Irene's painting works from that place.
More and more, we enjoy and appreciate a practice that pushes us, either by emotion or by generating the need to know what has happened and is currently happening on the canvas we are looking at. Looking at Irene’s previous work we experienced clarity about what she wanted to tell us, now that clarity is more intense even though the shapes are less and less certain. Painting is presented to us as a sweeping force, amusing, and daring, that speaks our own language but in an idiom with no words. Irene’s Painting is at that magnificent and delicate moment in which, having passed through an exultant youth, now begins another part of the journey where the experience is translated into equally daring gestures, colors, and compositions, loaded with a little more wisdom.
Facing her painting continues to raise a sense of mystery, but now with a greater intensity, derived from a more mature practice. For those who know her work in-depth, this evolution will appear more evident, and those meeting her for the first time will see that the work comes from an extended process. While her interests remain the same, the question is how to drive her practice into unfamiliar places. Irene’s pace is relentless, even so, her exacting standards do not allow her to accept all that she produces. An artist's language is composed of conceptual factors – even metaphysical – as well as tangible elements, which create a technique bound to the matter; we dare to say that it is in this materiality where Irene finds fertile ground to continue confronting her own work from the most honest place possible.
In her first solo show in 2021, Todas las fiestas del mañana (All tomorrow’s parties), her painting orbited around celebrations that could not happen because of the abrupt confinement of the pandemic. In that vast body of work, Painting was at the service of an interpretation of a youth trapped in a melancholy but without sadness as well as the more technical question on how to transfer a digital medium to the canvas (many of the works were based on photographs). In SIN FIN we meet again with the ecstasy of that youth, but we no longer can bring them into focus so clearly, it is as if the fervor is now at the service of painting itself. The freedom and risk that Irene assumes in this new body of work are proportional to the emotion caused by looking at them. Not fully understanding what is happening before our eyes does not diminish the power of the feeling. Irene – like many of her peers – has stopped painting under the common figurative vs. abstract duality, and when she is asked why, her answer is almost indecipherable for anyone who is not a painter or an artist. This decision not to settle into a single ‘style’ has to do with an innate willingness to take risks. If we are all concerned with the same problems, the way to find different solutions will be through the risks we take in trying to solve them – Irene's painting works from that place.
More and more, we enjoy and appreciate a practice that pushes us, either by emotion or by generating the need to know what has happened and is currently happening on the canvas we are looking at. Looking at Irene’s previous work we experienced clarity about what she wanted to tell us, now that clarity is more intense even though the shapes are less and less certain. Painting is presented to us as a sweeping force, amusing, and daring, that speaks our own language but in an idiom with no words. Irene’s Painting is at that magnificent and delicate moment in which, having passed through an exultant youth, now begins another part of the journey where the experience is translated into equally daring gestures, colors, and compositions, loaded with a little more wisdom.
