Amaia Gracia Azqueta
01 Nov 2016 - 08 Jan 2017
AMAIA GRACIA AZQUETA
Stripped
1 November 2016 - 8 January 2017
In the Abstract Cabinet, Sala Rekalde presents the exhibition Stripped by Amaia Gracia Azqueta included in the barriek 2016 programme, whose purpose is to display work by artists who have been awarded Grants for Artistic Creation by the Regional Council of Bizkaia.
THE SHOW
Stripped is the title of Amaia Gracia’s latest show for the abstract cabinet in the Sala Rekalde. A single word that says much and, direct in its attitude, confronts the work head on. In English, ‘stripped’ is about becoming naked, shedding, honing down, and that is what the artist has done. Shedding the line of activity pursued by her previous production and working from a new perspective. She approaches this exhibition with an intimacy in which she alone is privy to her process.
After two years of workshop production and her time at Kalostra, Amaia decided to come face to face with herself and see what she was really after in her work, breaking with preconceived styles and ideas and getting down to work once more seeking the first motions of contact with the material.
The work that makes up this exhibition does not fit in with an idea for a project, but with the way she goes about things. Amaia has worked on each of the pieces seeking her own sense of identity. The discourse does not subtract the part that the object already has. She works on objects through the body, the sensuality of curves in convexes, and seduction in concaves. She presents images of different moments in her creative process which, when brought together, activate a new meaning.
The artist’s eyes in her process of change leave the observer’s gaze at the Pyrenean countryside and focus her attention on her own body, on her identity as a subject. The observer observes herself. Looking inwards where her reflection is the sculptural object. What we see is not the representation of her body, but the metaphorical insinuation that her sculptures represent. In some pieces the completely visible body is in evidence, whilst in others it lies behind the veil of translucent material. The two parts are the same image, and constitute the piece.
The process of the work involves looking through her retina in an intuitive quest. She looks, selects, turns, arranges the piece in the space, in silence and through her thought. This gaze and its sense in the workshop is also transported to the landscape outside, where yet again she searches and captures with her camera small fragments of the natural architecture in which she sees and senses the same plasticity she finds in her work studio.
Iker Serrano
Bilbao, September 2016.
THE ARTIST
Amaia Gracia Azqueta lives and works in Bilbao. She graduated in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) where she is currently working on her PhD. She was awarded her first residency scholarship at the artistic production centre BilbaoArte (2011), followed by a UPV/EHU research staff training grant for the production of the final Master’s and PhD project (2013), and a third Casa de Velázquez scholarship from the French School in Madrid (2014).
In 2008 she obtained the first prize in Pamplona Young Artists, Ciudadela de Pamplona, and in 2009 the top award in the Navarre Young Artists Encounters contest. In 2012 she won the Frontera, espacio de cooperación award from the Territorial Co-operation Spain-France-Andorra, European Union programme and, the following year, the second prize from Ertibil, Bizkaia Young Artists.
Her latest personal shows include Estado Líquido in Espacio Pirineos, Graus (2013); Memoria de una observadora in the Festival Mapamundistas, Villaba, Navarra and at the Centro de Arte y Naturaleza CDAN, Huesca (2014); and La sublime in Espacio Marzana, Bilbao (2015). She has also taken part in several collective exhibitions, amongst which are Horizonte at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2013); Regards de femmes at the Casa de Velázquez, Madrid; Estampa 2014 at the Matadero Madrid; and the Festival Mapamundistas, Pamplona (2014).
Stripped
1 November 2016 - 8 January 2017
In the Abstract Cabinet, Sala Rekalde presents the exhibition Stripped by Amaia Gracia Azqueta included in the barriek 2016 programme, whose purpose is to display work by artists who have been awarded Grants for Artistic Creation by the Regional Council of Bizkaia.
THE SHOW
Stripped is the title of Amaia Gracia’s latest show for the abstract cabinet in the Sala Rekalde. A single word that says much and, direct in its attitude, confronts the work head on. In English, ‘stripped’ is about becoming naked, shedding, honing down, and that is what the artist has done. Shedding the line of activity pursued by her previous production and working from a new perspective. She approaches this exhibition with an intimacy in which she alone is privy to her process.
After two years of workshop production and her time at Kalostra, Amaia decided to come face to face with herself and see what she was really after in her work, breaking with preconceived styles and ideas and getting down to work once more seeking the first motions of contact with the material.
The work that makes up this exhibition does not fit in with an idea for a project, but with the way she goes about things. Amaia has worked on each of the pieces seeking her own sense of identity. The discourse does not subtract the part that the object already has. She works on objects through the body, the sensuality of curves in convexes, and seduction in concaves. She presents images of different moments in her creative process which, when brought together, activate a new meaning.
The artist’s eyes in her process of change leave the observer’s gaze at the Pyrenean countryside and focus her attention on her own body, on her identity as a subject. The observer observes herself. Looking inwards where her reflection is the sculptural object. What we see is not the representation of her body, but the metaphorical insinuation that her sculptures represent. In some pieces the completely visible body is in evidence, whilst in others it lies behind the veil of translucent material. The two parts are the same image, and constitute the piece.
The process of the work involves looking through her retina in an intuitive quest. She looks, selects, turns, arranges the piece in the space, in silence and through her thought. This gaze and its sense in the workshop is also transported to the landscape outside, where yet again she searches and captures with her camera small fragments of the natural architecture in which she sees and senses the same plasticity she finds in her work studio.
Iker Serrano
Bilbao, September 2016.
THE ARTIST
Amaia Gracia Azqueta lives and works in Bilbao. She graduated in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) where she is currently working on her PhD. She was awarded her first residency scholarship at the artistic production centre BilbaoArte (2011), followed by a UPV/EHU research staff training grant for the production of the final Master’s and PhD project (2013), and a third Casa de Velázquez scholarship from the French School in Madrid (2014).
In 2008 she obtained the first prize in Pamplona Young Artists, Ciudadela de Pamplona, and in 2009 the top award in the Navarre Young Artists Encounters contest. In 2012 she won the Frontera, espacio de cooperación award from the Territorial Co-operation Spain-France-Andorra, European Union programme and, the following year, the second prize from Ertibil, Bizkaia Young Artists.
Her latest personal shows include Estado Líquido in Espacio Pirineos, Graus (2013); Memoria de una observadora in the Festival Mapamundistas, Villaba, Navarra and at the Centro de Arte y Naturaleza CDAN, Huesca (2014); and La sublime in Espacio Marzana, Bilbao (2015). She has also taken part in several collective exhibitions, amongst which are Horizonte at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2013); Regards de femmes at the Casa de Velázquez, Madrid; Estampa 2014 at the Matadero Madrid; and the Festival Mapamundistas, Pamplona (2014).