Ignacio Uriarte
21 July - 16 October 2011
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IGNACIO URIARTE
Works
21 July - 16 October, 2011
Sala Rekalde is pleased to host the first individual exhibition at an
institutional setting by Ignacio Uriarte, a young artist who has
received unanimous critical and public acclaim in recent years.
The exhibition is a co-production with the Centre d’Art la Panera,
Lleida, where it will be subsequently shown (2012.01.26 - 2012.04.15).
WORKS by IGNACIO URIARTE provides an overview of the work by the artist
from the earliest days of his career. His work reflects the conceptual
and minimalist tradition of the Sixties and Seventies which he
approaches from a way that is decidedly his own.
Uriarte trained in the business world and worked for a multinational for
years where he discovered first hand that artistic gestures, mainly
painting and sculpture, could also be found in the grey fabric of an
office.
During his artistic training, he came into contact with the
post-conceptual work of the Nineties by artists of the ilk of Liam
Gillick, Martin Creed, Gabriel Orozco and the Spanish Ignasi Aballí, and
through them, he connected with the work of the first-generation of
conceptual artists. The mark left by them is undeniable and many of
their strategies are unequalled, which can be seen in the
dematerialisation, self-referentiality and the systems, repetitions or
permutations inherent to artists including the early Robert Morris,
Hanne Darboven or Dan Graham.
Yet the conceptual is a language that Ignacio Uriarte manages to
naturally subvert. In the first room of the exhibition, the works focus
on the tangible, with shapes that are almost sculptures and which emerge
from an interest in manual work. Systematic, precise, repetitive and
serial, that is true, but manual and tangible when all said and done.
Some of his paradigmatic works are thus here, including The A4 Cycle,
one of his best known works, a table with an expanse of A4 sheets of
paper rolled up to form cylinders, and thus creating a uniform surface
that however reveals a certain chromatic cadence.
The manual work systematic is also present in the well-known Blocs,
which provide a sort of landscape using bits of torn off paper, from
successive pages and following a specific pattern. The work of Uriarte
is a task that requires perseverance and care, but its mechanical nature
does not shun poetry, as can be seen from those two works.
The time drift in any artistic fact is subject to careful examination
throughout the work of Ignacio Uriarte. The second room contains works
that explore a procedural dynamics through video works and
installations. 60 seconds is a circumference, in the tradition of
Richard Long or of Ian Wilson, produced using wristwatches that are
synchronised so that when the hour is struck, their alarms ring
successively around the whole of its perimeter. Other videos resort to
serial and mechanical actions to set, in a clearly self-referential way,
the rhythm that marks the gestation of things. Accumulative Clock is a
good example of this premise.
As you make your way through the successive spaces of Sala Rekalde, you
will see clear signs of an interest in the work tools that can be found
in any office. There are rooms featuring works with inks and others
where works produced using fluorescent markers predominate.
In his different projects, Uriarte tries to exhaust all the expressive
possibilities offered by each material. His ideal habitat is
fleetingness and the huge expressive wealth that he manages to extract
from each of them is thus surprising. One good example is his
Monochromes without Ink, drawings produced using biros whose ink has run
out and where their constant and fruitless scribbling creates unusual
surfaces.
And ink, whether by defect or by excess, is an essential element in any
work. 80 Blots is a series of slides where you can see ink blots that
fall on the paper after squeezing an ink cartridge. The action is
mechanical and repetitive, and yet there are no two blots alike. When
expanded, they occur in a joyful and precise cadence.
At the end of the exhibition, The History of the Typewriter recited by
Michael Winslow summarises many of conceptual concerns of Ignacio
Uriarte. At the request of Uriarte, the famous actor from Police Academy
films produced the sounds of some historical typewriters. An apparently
cold recording becomes a journey in time through the typewriter, a
fundamental element to develop communication and language, aspects
regarding which Uriarte does not hide his interest.
The artist
IGNACIO URIARTE was born in Krefeld (Germany) in 1972. He studied
Business Administration in Madrid and Mannheim (Germany) and Fine Arts
in Guadalajara (Mexico).
His most important exhibitions include the ones at Casa del Lago, Mexico
City (ongoing), the MUSAC (León) or Kunstverein (Arnsberg, Germany).
He has recently taken part at the Turku Biennal (Finland) and has
exhibited at Nogueras Blanchard (Barcelona), La Fábrica (Madrid),
Gentilli (Prato, Italy), i8 (Reykjavik, Iceland), Taka Ishii (Tokyo and
Kyoto, Japan), Feinkost (Berlin) and Espacio Marte (Mexico) galleries.
He won the GAC 2011 Prize (awarded by the Catalan Galleries Association)
for the best exhibition at Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona in 2011
Curator: Javier Hontoria
www.salarekalde.bizkaia.net/
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