Erlea Maneros
27 Sep - 02 Dec 2007
ERLEA MANEROS
September 27th - December 02nd, 2007
Curator: Leire Vergara
The pictorial work of Erlea Maneros (Bilbao, 1977) is noted for its incisive exploration of the vast output of images today. Though abstract in character, her work takes figuration as its starting point and develops and takes shape through the artist's appropriation of visual documents that are analysed and transformed by her to the extent that the image is removed from its original context. In its final state, this treatment, articulated through various studies or versions of a single image, translates into a proposal that we take a critical pause in the face of the dizzying consumption of images to which we are subjected. Her work demands of the spectator a more reflexive reading, a thoughtfulness that calls for effort.
Maneros adopts a conceptual approach from a dual perspective: on the one hand, the painstaking study of the mechanisms of representation of the image; and on the other, a commitment to the medium itself, analysing the pictorial procedure used in each case. Through the first, she seeks to establish significant connections with the moments of crisis that have enabled painting to advance by flouting the conventions of the time. This is evident above all in the type of deconstructive analysis practised by the artist of common concepts in the history of painting, such as expressiveness, beauty, the sublime or others related to authorship and seriality. At the same time, her rigorous use of classic pictorial techniques 'such as the numerical grid that she employed to faithfully copy an image, or even obsolete technologies such as cyanography' makes us reconsider the mechanical reproduction of the image as a factor that demythologises the genius of the pictorial gesture. In her series, Maneros updates these issues once again and does so by going against any conformity in the mode of understanding not only the aesthetic but also the political dimension of painting.
The new series of works being shown by Erlea Maneros in The Abstract Cabinet at rekalde takes a specific image as its starting point: a painting by the American Charles Willson Peale, a portrait painter and contemporary of the political figures and events of the United States War of Independence, in which Peale portrays himself presenting his collection of works and curiosities, the very ones with which he founded the first privately owned museum in the country. With this visual reference, used in the various elements in the exhibition - drawings, photographs and prints - the artist invites us to enter her conceptual imaginary and at the same time to engage in a critique of notions such as the sublime and the monumental, or beauty and the artificial in the political-cultural system of today.
September 27th - December 02nd, 2007
Curator: Leire Vergara
The pictorial work of Erlea Maneros (Bilbao, 1977) is noted for its incisive exploration of the vast output of images today. Though abstract in character, her work takes figuration as its starting point and develops and takes shape through the artist's appropriation of visual documents that are analysed and transformed by her to the extent that the image is removed from its original context. In its final state, this treatment, articulated through various studies or versions of a single image, translates into a proposal that we take a critical pause in the face of the dizzying consumption of images to which we are subjected. Her work demands of the spectator a more reflexive reading, a thoughtfulness that calls for effort.
Maneros adopts a conceptual approach from a dual perspective: on the one hand, the painstaking study of the mechanisms of representation of the image; and on the other, a commitment to the medium itself, analysing the pictorial procedure used in each case. Through the first, she seeks to establish significant connections with the moments of crisis that have enabled painting to advance by flouting the conventions of the time. This is evident above all in the type of deconstructive analysis practised by the artist of common concepts in the history of painting, such as expressiveness, beauty, the sublime or others related to authorship and seriality. At the same time, her rigorous use of classic pictorial techniques 'such as the numerical grid that she employed to faithfully copy an image, or even obsolete technologies such as cyanography' makes us reconsider the mechanical reproduction of the image as a factor that demythologises the genius of the pictorial gesture. In her series, Maneros updates these issues once again and does so by going against any conformity in the mode of understanding not only the aesthetic but also the political dimension of painting.
The new series of works being shown by Erlea Maneros in The Abstract Cabinet at rekalde takes a specific image as its starting point: a painting by the American Charles Willson Peale, a portrait painter and contemporary of the political figures and events of the United States War of Independence, in which Peale portrays himself presenting his collection of works and curiosities, the very ones with which he founded the first privately owned museum in the country. With this visual reference, used in the various elements in the exhibition - drawings, photographs and prints - the artist invites us to enter her conceptual imaginary and at the same time to engage in a critique of notions such as the sublime and the monumental, or beauty and the artificial in the political-cultural system of today.