IG, 2021. Ink on paper. 21 x 15 cm
Luis Candaudap and Txus Meléndez were both born in Bilbao in 1964. They have staged a number of joint exhibitions, creating both common and separate works. Their work has been displayed at individual and collective exhibitions on the local, national and international scene. At the end of 2012, Sala Rekalde staged the first and most complete anthological exhibition of Luis Candaudap’s work. As well as painting, the two artists are both lecturers in the master’s degree in painting at the University of the Basque Country’s art school.
El ciervo en llamas, 2021. Graphite on paper. 21 x 15 cm
A. In September 2021 we found an unknown painting by our lecturer José Luis Casado Arsuaga. Luis did a fairly faithful drawing of the figure in the painting, carefully reflecting the corporeal gesture and the latent artifice he detected in it. The drawing was approximately 21 x 15 cm in size. Luis sent me a picture of the drawing by WhatsApp, and I tried to pick up from there. Without any conscious agreement, we both kept drawing, as a sort of response to the original painting and that first drawing.
B. I didn’t start off from that figure just out of a sense of respect for the original painting. For Txus the figure has an importance that is perhaps different to what I feel; in his case that possibly has to do with looking more outwards than inwards. In any case, as you can see in the show, there is a combination of the impulsive and that concern for the figure — the figure as recognizability and the figure as a formal situation on the sheet.
16 x 22 cm
B. In these drawings, together with original sin and the ghost of Picasso behind the figure in the painting, we find an account of highly emotional events, which have resulted in a whole catalogue of aspects of the human condition: pictures from newsreels, newspapers and other media outlets, and other features, ranging from myths and bible stories to comic strips and utterly banal clippings, remnants of mnemic visions or dreams, historical quotes, surprising obsessions that arose at some particular moment, and so on. This succulent appropriation of iconic trash, which is sometimes almost magpie-like, connotes the drawing in terms of sensation. Generally speaking, the drawing only needs to advance through this morass of images, with no other purpose than to solve a formal problem. This is what it meant to draw.
B. We have probably had to expend extra energy on reining in what we consider necessary. The aim is to prevent the essence of the theme from being the only thing on view. The drawings in the exhibition recount highly emotional events, a succulent porridge for the hungry container of expression.
los constructivistas, 2021. Mixed media on paper. 21 x 15 cm A. So, finally, here we are, with about 200 drawings and some small paintings. For reasons of space, though, we have cut the numbers down, with the help of our friend Gema Intxausti. From everything you can see, you can trace the way that B has already advanced from the most obvious to the least obvious — that underlying latency; from the crude to the violent; from the banal to the anecdotal. During the process, another war broke out, which left its own mark.
Sala Rekalde, presents JLC (Marrazkiak / Dibujos), a joint exhibition of work by Luis Candaudap and Txus Meléndez. The exhibition, featuring around seventy drawings on paper by the two artists, previously showed at the Aroztegi Aretoa in Bergara in June. ‘In these works’, say the artists, ‘each image substitutes another, following on from it and filling the gap left by it’.
The germ of the exhibition came when Luis stumbled across an unknown painting by José Luis Casado Arsuaga, a painter and lecturer at the School of Fine Arts. Luis’s interest was caught by the figure depicted and he used it as the basis for a drawing. He sent photos of the resulting image to Txus Meléndez, and the two artists began to exchange pictures.
Durango, 2021. Grafitoa paperean.
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