Aitor Lajarin-Encina

Statement

Aitor Lajarin-Encina’s art practice has two dimensions that complement each other—his studio work in painting, video, and other disciplines and his collaborative curatorial and organizational projects.

Through his paintings, videos, installations, and objects, he presents the vignettes and situations of existential ruminations and social satire that invite us to explore territories of thinking and emotion in relation to a wide range of psycho-social and political aspects related to contemporary living conditions. He is particularly interested in unpacking human and non-human existence, everyday life and social behavior, addressing its contradictions, paradoxes. His art practice draws aesthetically from the traditions of painting, comic, cartoon, and popular and amateur imagery to articulates a figurative ludic effort to find productive spaces of aesthetic fulfillment and critical engagement in these times of widespread cultural anxiety. This search is politically circumscribed by different modes of critique of late capitalism, western modernity, and the globalized neoliberal management of both subjectivities and of everyday life.

In 2015 he co-founded DXIX Projects, an artist-run project space in Venice, CA that seeks to contribute to the art context in Los Angeles. At DXIX, they facilitate transdisciplinary exchanges, collaborations, and conversations among artists, curators, writers, and audiences to create exhibitions, workshops, events, publications, and other materials. As a founder and co-director of DXIX, he has been involved in producing and curating a very diverse and inclusive interdisciplinary program that now has a solid presence in the Los Angeles and Northern Colorado alternative art scene. The collaborations at DXIX allow’s Aitor to be involved in providing visibility to diverse cultural productions that are not yet realized while engaging in dialogues beyond the limits established by his own studio practice. He brings to these collaborations his artistic sensibility. His curatorial strategies resemble those of the art-making process. At the same time, his studio work ends up echoing in very intimate ways many of the unexpected learnings that come from these collaborations.

GlogauAIR Project

Aitor’s proposed project is to continue developing his COLLABORATIVE PAINTING series. These are paintings in which he invites other artists and curators to intervene in his paintings and host small-scale art exhibitions and projects physically and literally, INSIDE the paintings (Please see the dossier for more information) what would imply collaborating with some GlogauAIR and Berlin art community members. He would like to also use this opportunity to begin a new painting series, the PLEIN AIR series, in which he paints landscapes that he finds on consumer product labels as a way to reflect on different connections between landscape, nature and consumerist society.

CV Summary

EDUCATION

• MFA, University of California, San Diego.
• BFA, University of Basque Country, Spain.

SOLO AND TWO PEOPLE EXHIBITIONS

• La Perspectiva, Artnueve, Murcia, SP.
• Windows PPL PRJTCS, Fort Collins, CO
• Tarta Tatlin, La Luz De La Nevera gallery, UDA, Puebla, MX.
• Crickets, Heritage Square Museum, Los Angeles. CA.
• Crickets, Trumpet Ballad, Vacancy gallery, Los Angeles. CA.
• Postcity, Artium Museum of Contemporary Art, Vitoria, SP.

RECENT SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

• Micrologies, Irenic Projects, Los Angeles.
• Here-There, Friend of a Friend gallery, Denver. CO.
• Idea de una coleccion, Palacio Almudi, Murcia, SP.
• Porcelain and Volcano, Take Care Gallery, Los Angeles.CA.
• Collaborative Painting #1, Meteoríto, QIPO Art Fair, Mexico City.MX.
• Common Grounds, L.A.R.P. Rotterdam. NL.
• Co-Lab IV, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA.
• Delimitaciones inciertas, Casa Reforma 917, Puebla, MX.
• A Store Show, ODD ARK gallery, Los Angeles, CA.
• Begira, Fundacion Bilbao Arte, Bilbao, SP.
• Cuerpos-Metáfora, C. C. Manuel Benito Moliner, Huesca. SP.
• GAUR (sic), curated by Nekane Aramburu. Travelling project International

Gallery