Jose Ibarrola
13 Jul - 16 Oct 2016
JOSE IBARROLA
Cuestión De Tiempo
13 July – 16 October 2016
Jose Ibarrola (Bilbao, 1955) presents at Sala Rekalde a monographic show under the title Cuestión de tiempo (A matter of time). The exhibition stablishes an approximation to the Quattrocento from the contemporaneity of the artistic and cultural fact. The exhibition gathers around 125 works among painting, sculpture and drawing in small format produced in the last three years.
Cuestión de tiempo is the result of an intersection of impressions. It is a show comprised of medium- and large-format paintings, works on paper and sculptures, that form an interrelated thematic series whose axis and common denominator is a cross-cutting dialogue with the same number of works by various authors from the Quattrocento. It is a confrontation between sculptures and paintings, between their dimensional mutation and their iconographic variety, between their thematic permeability and their temporal relativity, a dialogue that dives through the changing waters of discursive memory. They are secular subjective interpretations of various paintings and recognizable authors, contextualized through the filter of contemporaneity and recognition.
Although the bulk of my work has been fundamentally pictorial, sculpture really marked the beginning of my artistic activity. From the first works made with wood and remains found on the beach, in some of my exhibitions I have combined over time sculptures or sculptural installations created from painted items in the pictures: centauresses, bathers, paper boats, umbrellas... During these recent years I began a reverse process in the relationship I have between sculpture and painting. The sculptural world has entered my paintings.
If the use of “found or recycled objects” in my sculptures is a matter of aesthetic choice, about the way time and chance intervene upon these objects distilled by use, history or natural forces, a respectful and critical approach to an artistic time such as the Renaissance through painting is a bid for recognition as opposed to mimesis. I am just as interested, if not more so, in the effects brought about by the art work and its power to set off chains of reasoning as by the actual artistic sign. The relation I want to establish between the two and three dimensional is a natural confluence that, in this case, I have placed in a historical time of deep cultural marks.
When at a crossroads or a moment of change it is good to look at the classical masters. I have always been aware that the mother of the muses is memory, and although art often utilizes the break with the past, it also returns to that past and draws inspiration from it. That human tendency is a reminder that we are also memory, that we need to look at the old forms with new eyes to find new roads, to know where we’re headed, recognizing where we’re coming from.
So the show is a look at the Quattrocento from the contemporary focus of today’s artistic cultural circumstance, a championing of the polytechnic craftsman, an approach to the Renaissance world, the world of the birth of the individual that galvanizes the different ways in which I tackle my creative work.
THE ARTIST
.Jose Ibarrola works and lives in Bilbao. In 1972 he participated in a collective art show for the first time. Since then, he has exhibited both individually and collectively in several galleries, institutions or museums, or his work can be found in their collections. He has also collaborated and continues to do so in various communications media as an illustrator or graphic narrator and, similarly, combines his skills as a painter, sculptor and illustrator with his role as a set designer, working as an artistic director for the theatre, different events, film or television in numerous performances.
Cuestión De Tiempo
13 July – 16 October 2016
Jose Ibarrola (Bilbao, 1955) presents at Sala Rekalde a monographic show under the title Cuestión de tiempo (A matter of time). The exhibition stablishes an approximation to the Quattrocento from the contemporaneity of the artistic and cultural fact. The exhibition gathers around 125 works among painting, sculpture and drawing in small format produced in the last three years.
Cuestión de tiempo is the result of an intersection of impressions. It is a show comprised of medium- and large-format paintings, works on paper and sculptures, that form an interrelated thematic series whose axis and common denominator is a cross-cutting dialogue with the same number of works by various authors from the Quattrocento. It is a confrontation between sculptures and paintings, between their dimensional mutation and their iconographic variety, between their thematic permeability and their temporal relativity, a dialogue that dives through the changing waters of discursive memory. They are secular subjective interpretations of various paintings and recognizable authors, contextualized through the filter of contemporaneity and recognition.
Although the bulk of my work has been fundamentally pictorial, sculpture really marked the beginning of my artistic activity. From the first works made with wood and remains found on the beach, in some of my exhibitions I have combined over time sculptures or sculptural installations created from painted items in the pictures: centauresses, bathers, paper boats, umbrellas... During these recent years I began a reverse process in the relationship I have between sculpture and painting. The sculptural world has entered my paintings.
If the use of “found or recycled objects” in my sculptures is a matter of aesthetic choice, about the way time and chance intervene upon these objects distilled by use, history or natural forces, a respectful and critical approach to an artistic time such as the Renaissance through painting is a bid for recognition as opposed to mimesis. I am just as interested, if not more so, in the effects brought about by the art work and its power to set off chains of reasoning as by the actual artistic sign. The relation I want to establish between the two and three dimensional is a natural confluence that, in this case, I have placed in a historical time of deep cultural marks.
When at a crossroads or a moment of change it is good to look at the classical masters. I have always been aware that the mother of the muses is memory, and although art often utilizes the break with the past, it also returns to that past and draws inspiration from it. That human tendency is a reminder that we are also memory, that we need to look at the old forms with new eyes to find new roads, to know where we’re headed, recognizing where we’re coming from.
So the show is a look at the Quattrocento from the contemporary focus of today’s artistic cultural circumstance, a championing of the polytechnic craftsman, an approach to the Renaissance world, the world of the birth of the individual that galvanizes the different ways in which I tackle my creative work.
THE ARTIST
.Jose Ibarrola works and lives in Bilbao. In 1972 he participated in a collective art show for the first time. Since then, he has exhibited both individually and collectively in several galleries, institutions or museums, or his work can be found in their collections. He has also collaborated and continues to do so in various communications media as an illustrator or graphic narrator and, similarly, combines his skills as a painter, sculptor and illustrator with his role as a set designer, working as an artistic director for the theatre, different events, film or television in numerous performances.