MANUEL QUINTANA MARTELO 2022.03.12 - 2022.07.03 Sala Rekalde presents Containers (2012-2022) by Manuel Quintana Martelo (b. Roxos, Santiago de Compostela, 1946). The exhibition is produced by MARCO, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vigo. This show provides a first opportunity to view just under ninety paintings and drawings from Containers, a series on which the artist has been working uninterruptedly since 2012. As well as the pictures themselves —in a variety of formats— the exhibition also includes preparatory sketches, drawings and large-scale watercolours, offering an insight into the artist’s working process and the way he responds to different media. In recent years, Quintana Martelo’s work has centred on a series of paintings, in which he uses skips (containers) that he comes across in different cities as his leitmotif, starting point and excuse. There is a striking common trait running through all the works, a definite sculptural appearance initially and an appealing composition and visual impact. He treats the skips as sculptural objects, but also as urban still lifes.
Ercilla kalea 15, 2022 Mixed media, 173 x 460 cm
For the exhibition at Sala Rekalde, the Galician artist has produced a piece entitled Ercilla kalea 15, based on a photograph taken at N.o 15, Calle Ercilla, Bilbao at 12:23 pm on 25th October 2021. The skip is displayed in the front window of Sala Rekalde, with the corresponding sketches. On entering the gallery, the first work visitors see is Don Tello 19, painted from a photograph taken at 1:50 pm on 8th November 2014 at N.o 19, Calle Don Tello, Gernika. Painting Containers At 2:36 pm on 14th March 2012 in Madrid, when I was walking from the Gran Vía towards Atocha, I saw a yellow skip at N.o 23, Calle Marqués de Cubas, lit by the sunlight shining diagonally from right to left — my favourite light, which I use in nearly all my work. I took a photo and over the following days, I saw the skip again, getting fuller and fuller, until one day it was gone.
Marqués de Cubas 23, 2012-2015 Oil on canvas, 280 x 780 cm
For a while, I kept the image in my mind’s eye, thinking it might make a good motif for a painting, with its visual impact, near-perfect load (which I had adjusted slightly when I was photographing it) and the fabulous light. As the days went by, I kept looking at the picture again and an idea began to take shape. The painting would have to be big, almost life-size, so I got all the material I needed, taking the same risks as anyone who embarks on a task without the slightest notion of how it will end. My discourse is directed towards a constant search for the final result. I study many different variables and possibilities, working with paper, photographic images, real images, watercolour, oil, and so on, and exploring the whole panoply of shapes and approaches in order to bring the image to a conclusion at a single “last” point — although I am aware that that point is never really “the last” and all the different options will always remain present. Some of the works have been preserved in “their” moment; others have undergone variations. I never stop seeing and bringing together different paths, mutating, varying and trying different approaches. That is my game, my weakness for doubt and variation, my way of working. Sometimes, I have found it necessary to repeat the same object over and over again ad nauseam. Starting from the initial image, I look between the lines for any other information that might serve my purpose. That reiteration, that almost obsessive repetition, is very evident in the series Lope de Vega. Time and again I come back to the drawing and its possibilities. It unlocks a range of options that steer the final, ultimate result towards a transparency that leaves no part unstudied or unresolved. And this continuous and repetitive vision leaves, as a symptom of its exhaustion, a need to close the cycle and end the practical discourse. I know full well that, if I were to start again, other options would either close in on themselves and/or open new paths to explore: the path, the route taken, the journey — which is the single and most plausible truth in the whole adventure of painting. For me, that’s how it works.
Don Tello 19, 2014-2017 Oil on canvas, 216 x 362 cm
I paint skips because they are an everyday element in the urban landscape, because they are something more than just somewhere to put waste and forgotten items. However, I also paint them because I enjoy going off on a tangent about the theory as well as about painting itself. Maybe that’s what I do: digress, find and re-find, see and analyse what I see, objectify the image I have seen and turn it into material for the expression I am searching for. I situate the image within a plane, the dominant plane and, therefore, the only field for the action I have in front of me. I know it has height and width; I know there is no depth. I know it is not a window through which one can observe the world. I know I don’t want to fake the depth, because three-dimensionality only exists in the actual view of the object; once you transfer it onto a flat plane, it becomes the very reason for the act of painting. Perhaps it all boils down to an idea I often come back to: increasingly I am becoming less interested in painting and more interested in the exercise of painting. I don’t know whether I’m right. I don’t know whether that’s a good justification for an action, but I do know I don’t care. I paint. Manuel Quintana Martelo
JENNI ALVARADO
QUINTANA MARTELO
www.quintanamartelo.com
Born in Roxos, Santiago de Compostela, in 1946, Quintana Martelo began his artistic career in the 1970s, when his work was marked by a strong social commitment. He studied at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de Sant Jordi in Barcelona and his work soon evolved towards processual registers of urban and expressionist movements. Castellano
Objeto ritual
In the 1980s, he became involved in the Atlántica movement. In the 1990s, he moved 2021.07.20 - 2021.09.19 to New York, successfully showing his work there and in Caracas, Miami and Porto. He taught at the Xelmírez High School in Santiago de Compostela, where he was also the head teacher, but gave up this career to focus on his art.
JENNI ALVARADO
He led the Association of Visual Artists of Galicia and was later appointed president of PRÓXIMA EXPOSICIÓN the Galician Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He has been the subject of a retrospective at the Auditorio de Galicia (2007), a monographic exhibition at the Provincial Government barriek 2021 of A Coruña (2010), and a solo exhibition at Kiosko Alfonso in A Coruña (2011). In 2012 JAVIER he was the winnerRODRÍGUEZ in the Plastic PÉREZ-CURIEL Arts category of the Galician Culture Prize (Premio da 20 julio 19 septiembre 2021 2021 21 – septiembre – 21 noviembre Cultura Galega).
Objeto ritual
rekalde Alameda Recalde, 30 | 48009 Bilbao
Sala Rekalde presenta la exposición de JENNI ALVARADO con la Tel. +34 94 406 85 32 que inicia el ciclo de exposiciones de barriek 2021, el programa www.salarekalde.bizkaia.eus que muestra una selección de los-las artistas que han disfrutado de lasOrdutegia becas de artes plásticas y visuales de la Diputación Foral de Asteartetik larunbatera: 10 - 14 eta 17 - 20:30 Bizkaia. Igande eta jai egunetan: 10 - 14 Astelehenetan itxita
La exposición reúne los trabajos creados por la artista en el último Horario año: pinturas y dibujos de gran formato realizados sobre papel Martes a sábado: 10 - 14 y 17 - 20:30 h junto Domingos a dibujos, esculturas y festivos: 10 - 14 h y proyecciones audiovisuales que reLunes cerrado presentan la evolución del proceso en torno al objeto y a sus cualidades totémicas. Opening hours Tuesday to Saturday: 10 - 14 and 17 - 20:30 h El título de and la exposición Objeto ritual se refiere al proyecto deSundays holidays: 10 - 14 h Monday por closedJenni Alvarado durante varios años y que trata sarrollado sobresarrera la transformación lo escultórico a lo audiovisual y de lo doan | entrada libre | de admission free visual a lo pictórico, a partir de la selección de algunos fotogramas de los videos realizados.
Alvarado produce las composiciones a través de la recogida de imágenes y materiales audiovisuales en torno a la idea de ritual. Igualmente la idea de falso tótem contribuye a generar una reflexión sobre las cualidades que otorgamos a los objetos a partir de su uso y el vínculo especial que nos une a determinados elementos.
Alda. Recalde, 30 - 48009 Bilbao - Tfno. +34 94 4068532 - www.salarekalde.bizkaia.eus