...y vosotros
Solo show by Silvia Olabarria
...y vosotros
Solo show by Silvia Olabarria
20 May - 18 June 2021
credits
Juan de Sande
In these turbulent and confusing times, we want to claim the importance of culture, for individual and collective enrichment. Culture plays a shadowy but constant role that emerges to the surface when it is most needed. We are immersed in a new crisis when the previous one was not yet completely overcome. So we venture to say that the crisis will be the modus operandi for our years to come.
Experience -and History, which is written experience- has shown us that one of the pillars that sustain a society, a civilisation, is what identifies us as particular individuals forming a collective and leaving a mark on the skin of history; that is culture and in our times, we are putting it aside. Hasn't something similar been happening with painting? Without underestimating any other artistic discipline, let us make the exercise of understanding painting as the bow of the ship of Fine Arts, just as culture is the mast of a society adrift.
In these times of crisis, not only economic but ideological, we want to spread culture, and one of our ways of doing it is by reclaiming painting. History has also shown us that our cognitive retention capacity is fragile and weak, hence man is the only animal that stumbles over the same stone. We propose you to review our actions from the perspective of what unites us and makes us different as a society, of what we create with the sole aim of raising our human possibilities with the hope that some of this will infiltrate the collective imagination. Art is that sap that we produce in individual places but that flows at its own will through an entire city, a country, the entire world.
The decision to exhibit a body of work by Silvia Olabarría that was produced almost 10 years ago, has to do with this confirmation of culture and the review of what we have produced that can teach us more about who we are in the present, to continue into the future. The constant vertigo of going forward forces us to look little or nothing at what we have built behind and this is one of the most devastating signs of our time; politically, economically, culturally, we produce at exacerbated rates to discard whatever is left behind in pursuit of the new that may come. What is the meaning of all this? We propose you to look at this body of paintings from a more innocent place, much more physical than intellectual. There is no doubt that the works that you have in front of you drink from the entire history of art that Silvia has apprehended in her long career, then, these paintings have something to tell us not only about the artist who creates them, but about the interpretation of a present time with respect to its past. The solid language of Silvia Olabarría's painting –even in works that were created years ago– is enriched by the history of different societies and individuals, hence the strength and forcefulness of each canvas, of each trace and mixture of colors.
Also, this body of work seen today is an exercise to deeply understand Silvia Olabarría's practice, which has a long history. …y vosotros signifies a state of discovery in her painting, in which the tension that exists between the figurative and the abstract became more latent. Her portraits of the beginning are confused in the abstractions of these canvases, and in turn, these brushstrokes intrude on the more recent work, where the abstraction prevails but does not hide that tension between the explicit and the ethereal.
As we have been saying since our opening, we are interested in investigating our current moment to understand where we are headed, which tools we have to continue. And we reaffirm ourselves that to achieve this, we have to look back, with no melancholy and longing, but with firmness and calm. What builds an artist's career? What builds a culture and a society? You will agree that in order to look forward, we must be very clear about what sustains us from behind.
Experience -and History, which is written experience- has shown us that one of the pillars that sustain a society, a civilisation, is what identifies us as particular individuals forming a collective and leaving a mark on the skin of history; that is culture and in our times, we are putting it aside. Hasn't something similar been happening with painting? Without underestimating any other artistic discipline, let us make the exercise of understanding painting as the bow of the ship of Fine Arts, just as culture is the mast of a society adrift.
In these times of crisis, not only economic but ideological, we want to spread culture, and one of our ways of doing it is by reclaiming painting. History has also shown us that our cognitive retention capacity is fragile and weak, hence man is the only animal that stumbles over the same stone. We propose you to review our actions from the perspective of what unites us and makes us different as a society, of what we create with the sole aim of raising our human possibilities with the hope that some of this will infiltrate the collective imagination. Art is that sap that we produce in individual places but that flows at its own will through an entire city, a country, the entire world.
The decision to exhibit a body of work by Silvia Olabarría that was produced almost 10 years ago, has to do with this confirmation of culture and the review of what we have produced that can teach us more about who we are in the present, to continue into the future. The constant vertigo of going forward forces us to look little or nothing at what we have built behind and this is one of the most devastating signs of our time; politically, economically, culturally, we produce at exacerbated rates to discard whatever is left behind in pursuit of the new that may come. What is the meaning of all this? We propose you to look at this body of paintings from a more innocent place, much more physical than intellectual. There is no doubt that the works that you have in front of you drink from the entire history of art that Silvia has apprehended in her long career, then, these paintings have something to tell us not only about the artist who creates them, but about the interpretation of a present time with respect to its past. The solid language of Silvia Olabarría's painting –even in works that were created years ago– is enriched by the history of different societies and individuals, hence the strength and forcefulness of each canvas, of each trace and mixture of colors.
Also, this body of work seen today is an exercise to deeply understand Silvia Olabarría's practice, which has a long history. …y vosotros signifies a state of discovery in her painting, in which the tension that exists between the figurative and the abstract became more latent. Her portraits of the beginning are confused in the abstractions of these canvases, and in turn, these brushstrokes intrude on the more recent work, where the abstraction prevails but does not hide that tension between the explicit and the ethereal.
As we have been saying since our opening, we are interested in investigating our current moment to understand where we are headed, which tools we have to continue. And we reaffirm ourselves that to achieve this, we have to look back, with no melancholy and longing, but with firmness and calm. What builds an artist's career? What builds a culture and a society? You will agree that in order to look forward, we must be very clear about what sustains us from behind.
