Jesús Lizaso
29 Jan 2016 - 01 May 2017
JESÚS LIZASO
Re Flexión
29 January – 01 May 2016
Curator: José Julián Bakedano
Re flexión is the title chosen by Jesús Lizaso (Barakaldo, 1961) for the showing of a set of 27 sculptures created over the last decade, with special attention to his most recent production. In the exhibition his personal artistic development and evolution can be appreciated following his abandonment of works rooted in the figurative tradition and references with anthropomorphic and symbolic associations. In recent years, self-referencing guides his plastic approach in a series he calls Ortotropías. As Lizaso explains, they are pure recreations of volumes, lines spaces and vacuums. Material and form become simple work elements, devoid of any personal and psychic meaning.
The arrangement of the works in Sala Rekalde does not, however, follow a chronological order but chooses to set up different dialogues and associations between the pieces to generate a more dynamic reading. Although Jesus is an artist with important public work to his record, only Engranaje ocular (2005), which is usually installed in the Social Antzoki in Basauri, is exhibited in the show. The remaining pieces are from his studio, some of them of recent creation.
The work process that prevails in the show is the manipulation of metal and wood. While this process was previously more physical than speculative, as the sculptor advanced in his experimentation, a series of works emerged in which he takes the plastic play of these materials to surprising extremes, in a kind of dialectic between the light and the heavy, the rigid and the malleable. His work is frequently marked by a touch of irony, as when he shows us, in Mesa doblada II (2014), something verging on a trick of magic as he transforms the table into an absurd and useless object, or when he subverts the physical calculation of materials, as occurs in Press II (2012) or in Gravedad3I (2013).In other pieces, the deceptive malleability of the wood becomes the protagonist of plastic exercises in the shape of a spiral or perhaps a curl, which sometimes seem restrained by the weight of the iron from the possibility of splitting, as in Juego de niños (2014), or are kept in an unstable equilibrium upon a metal base, as can be observed in Sugea (2010).
THE ARTIST
Jesús Lizaso began his artistic activity in 1983 when he joined the Ceramics and Sculpture Workshop in the Casa de Cultura in Basauri. Prior to this he had studied Professional Training, specializing in Metal, and had worked in a carpenter’s workshop: in time this background would guide his sculptural practice towards the handling of iron and wood. The same models inspired his first steps with ceramics. Allusion is made to them in his series of screws and nails in refractory clay, some of them large in volume; the modelling of pieces based on Basque iconography would later be incorporated.
But, at the end of the 1990s, as he left figuration behind and moved into synthesis and abstraction, he also began to use iron and wood, as a medium of expression and plasticity, until the completion of his latest Ortotropías.
Jesús Lizaso is an artist who has produced a great deal of public work, obtaining the Gold Medal of Arts at the Olympic Museum of Barcelona (2000) and the first Lorenzo il Magnifico with a gold medal at the Florence Bienniale (2011). He has held upwards of thirty individual exhibitions and many collective shows, outstanding amongst which is his tour of the USA in the noughties, and the exhibition projected at the Círculo de Arte in Toledo (2010). His latest individual show took place at the Museum of Art and History in Durango (2014).
Re Flexión
29 January – 01 May 2016
Curator: José Julián Bakedano
Re flexión is the title chosen by Jesús Lizaso (Barakaldo, 1961) for the showing of a set of 27 sculptures created over the last decade, with special attention to his most recent production. In the exhibition his personal artistic development and evolution can be appreciated following his abandonment of works rooted in the figurative tradition and references with anthropomorphic and symbolic associations. In recent years, self-referencing guides his plastic approach in a series he calls Ortotropías. As Lizaso explains, they are pure recreations of volumes, lines spaces and vacuums. Material and form become simple work elements, devoid of any personal and psychic meaning.
The arrangement of the works in Sala Rekalde does not, however, follow a chronological order but chooses to set up different dialogues and associations between the pieces to generate a more dynamic reading. Although Jesus is an artist with important public work to his record, only Engranaje ocular (2005), which is usually installed in the Social Antzoki in Basauri, is exhibited in the show. The remaining pieces are from his studio, some of them of recent creation.
The work process that prevails in the show is the manipulation of metal and wood. While this process was previously more physical than speculative, as the sculptor advanced in his experimentation, a series of works emerged in which he takes the plastic play of these materials to surprising extremes, in a kind of dialectic between the light and the heavy, the rigid and the malleable. His work is frequently marked by a touch of irony, as when he shows us, in Mesa doblada II (2014), something verging on a trick of magic as he transforms the table into an absurd and useless object, or when he subverts the physical calculation of materials, as occurs in Press II (2012) or in Gravedad3I (2013).In other pieces, the deceptive malleability of the wood becomes the protagonist of plastic exercises in the shape of a spiral or perhaps a curl, which sometimes seem restrained by the weight of the iron from the possibility of splitting, as in Juego de niños (2014), or are kept in an unstable equilibrium upon a metal base, as can be observed in Sugea (2010).
THE ARTIST
Jesús Lizaso began his artistic activity in 1983 when he joined the Ceramics and Sculpture Workshop in the Casa de Cultura in Basauri. Prior to this he had studied Professional Training, specializing in Metal, and had worked in a carpenter’s workshop: in time this background would guide his sculptural practice towards the handling of iron and wood. The same models inspired his first steps with ceramics. Allusion is made to them in his series of screws and nails in refractory clay, some of them large in volume; the modelling of pieces based on Basque iconography would later be incorporated.
But, at the end of the 1990s, as he left figuration behind and moved into synthesis and abstraction, he also began to use iron and wood, as a medium of expression and plasticity, until the completion of his latest Ortotropías.
Jesús Lizaso is an artist who has produced a great deal of public work, obtaining the Gold Medal of Arts at the Olympic Museum of Barcelona (2000) and the first Lorenzo il Magnifico with a gold medal at the Florence Bienniale (2011). He has held upwards of thirty individual exhibitions and many collective shows, outstanding amongst which is his tour of the USA in the noughties, and the exhibition projected at the Círculo de Arte in Toledo (2010). His latest individual show took place at the Museum of Art and History in Durango (2014).