Spain
Statement
Ismael Iglesias. 1974. Durango (Bizkaia). Lives and Works in Bilbao (Basque Country).
Iglesias participated in the Espacio Abisal project and resided in the Delfina Foundation in London. He is a multidisciplinary artist who is able to build his work with his own style. His proposals, halfway between painting and installation have been shown in several group and solo exhibitions in Bilbao, Barcelona, Madrid, London, Basel, Los Angeles, Tijuana or Beijing.
His artwork, highly effective on a visual level, derives from the systematic search within the newest technology. The intention is not so much to capture images in order to canvas them, but to comprehend and accept their articulation speed. This paradigmatic search for the essentials and for the memento in its various stages, allows the artist to blend the achievements of traditional pictorial avant-gardism with the computer screens opaque luminescence by means of systematic fragmentation.
Annalist and composer Ismael Iglesias shows his own ideas of logic and existence with a code that transcends and detaches from time and space. He advances an aesthetic language with high doses of idiosyncrasy and describes the natural spirit of simplicity. A world full of experiences and visual information to which the artist seeks to achieve by producing a wide range of images and signs. The graphic medium, new technologies, music and audiovisual media reinforces his particular concept of contemporary art. Faced with a strong artistic commitment, Iglesias has established himself as a complex creator who presents a formal maze searching for an intimate essence. He develops original readings in his perspectives and innovate conclusions through the plurality of languages, styles and media giving more independence to the elements. From the restructuring of the conventional approaches to painting, its combinations are endless. His compositions are projected as illusions suggested by the impetuous imagination armed with the power of colour and overlapping with mixed impressions. The basque painter exhibits an imaginative and changing practice which facilitates hybrid systems that allow him to play with several pieces at once, without leaving the synthesis of previous work.
Profile
GlogauAIR resident from October 2019 to December 2019
GlogauAIR Project
Error (Controlled accidents)
As Keith Moxey points out, the images – as vivid, visual objects that escape history and are not confined to the context of their specific original cultural situation – retain the power to affect the present irrespective of the moment of its creation. The gaze – necessarily conditioned by concrete visual compositions – on new images implies constant connections that transcend the intentions of its authors, continually creating new semantic dimensions and rereading them on our visual-and narrative-global interpretation.
Fabrics and plastics, and specifically the wrinkled surfaces, are the starting point and the leitmotif of the series trashpaintings, the result of the incessant research on the development and construction of the pictorial image. Immersed in the tradition of Western painting, the concept of folding and its plastic embodiment allows me to give more attention to the discipline and question the limits between representation and reality by putting the focus on the realistic reproduction of a surface – tissue, plastic, metal – which in turn envelops the ultimate reality, which acts as a metaphor for the metaphysical search – mystical or rational – of the archetype hidden behind sensory perception – not by chance from an etymological point of view the truth – Alétheia – means unhiding, in relation to the action of undressing or revealing.
Fascinated by the plastic values of the cloths of the dresses, curtains or curtains, fundamental elements both by the shape and by the color of the compositions of numerous paintings and ancient sculptures – from the folds and minimize bendings bathed by a light Spectral of the monumental colorful robes of El Greco to the meticulous pleats, folds and retracts of the garments of the saints of Zurbarán through the furrows, nooks and marble roughness of the Roman or baroque sculptures, such as the Holy Teresa in Bernini’s ecstasy –, I try to transmit, through the practice of zoom, a self-autonomy giving rise to complex volumetric surfaces of multiple evocations where the classic and the futuristic coexist – the cybernetic, the theatrical, or the enigmatic micro and Macro Worlds – At the same time.
“The artist does not represent, redraws reality.” Starting from the controlled accident approach of David Alfaro Siqueiros, through a process based on the random gesture of bending or creasing with its consequent shadows and light degradation, the focus of attention is placed on the random transformation of the moldable and tactile qualities of the plane and materials. When approaching tradition from the contemporary – and vice versa – in a visual and conceptual hermeneutic circle, cartographies arise from the irregularity of impeccable technical invoice and photographic character in a sort of hyper-realistic abstraction – nothing is more unreal than Realism – which responds to the philosophical question about knowledge and the representation of reality, approaching the divine, from the Poetics of the wrinkle.
CV Summary
WORKSHOPS
- 2011 Pilar Valdivieso/Cristian Walter Serigrafía expandida. Fundación Bilbao Arte.
- 2005 Soledad Sevilla, “Plastic and graphics of paper”. Bilbao Arte Foundation, Bilbao.
- 2004 Juan Uslé, “Painting workshop”. Marcelino Botín Foundation, Santander.
- 1999 José Ramón Alcalá, “Electronic Art” and Markus Lüpertz, “Reflections on Sculpture Dimension”. Bilbao Arte Foundation, Bilbao.
GRANTS AND PRIZES
- 2018 Prize IDEALISTA. Grant Propuestas VEGAP.
- 2017 Basque Country Government Grant for a personal project for book publication
- 2016 Basque Country Government Grant for a personal project. Artist in Residence Arropaineko Arragua. Lekeitio.
- 2015 Basque Country Government Grant for a personal project
- 2014 Artist in Residence Studio TJINCHINA, Tijuana México / Grant Juan y Pablo Otaola de Basauri/ Basque Country Government Grant for a personal project / Basque Country Government Grant for México.
- 2013 Artist in Residence Studio BilbaoArte Foundation
- 2012 Artist in Residence Studio, Bejing,(China) / Basque Country Government Grant for CHINA
- 2011 Artist in Residence CCAndratx(Mallorca) /Basque Country Government Grant for a personal project /Grant Instituto Etxepare / 2º premio Certamen Artístico “Villa de Amurrio” 2011
- 2010 Adquisition 71 Exposición Nacional de Artes Plásticas de Valdepeñas.1st Accésit VI Bienal de Salou Recerca Pictorica. Basque Country Government Grant for a personal project.
- 2009 Accésit V Carsa National Painting, Art andTechnology Prize. Accésit Honda Painting Prize. La Garriga. Acquisition 2nd Young Painting Prize Ibercaja. Acquisition 70 Exposición Nacional de Artes Plásticas de Valdepeñas. Acquisition Diputación Provincial de Alicante. Basque Country Government Grant for a catalogue.
- 2008 Residency Grant Delfina Foundation, Londres. Basque Country Government Grant for a personal project. 2nd Prize Painting and Scuplture COAATR. Logroño, La Rioja.
- 2007 Residency Grant Spain College in Paris, MCE. Fine Arts Grant Durango Council. Acquisition Cajamadrid.
SOLO
- 2018 STREETFIGHTER. SC Gallery . Bilbao SC Gallery
- 2016 SAN JUAN LA NOCHE DE LAS HOGUERAS. Aldama Fabre Gallery Aldama Fabre Gallery
- 2015 AMÉN ZU HOR TA NI HEMEN. Museo Arte e Historia de Durango. *
- 2015 LA FIN ABSOLUE DU MONDE. Practicas Bastardas. Torre de Ariz de Basauri. Bilbao *
