12 Nov AFTER ROBOT SOULS
This exhibition, Robot Souls, has been tremendously gratifying for me. I devoted myself, body and soul, to delivering my best. I have tried to be on top of each detail and watched them with dedication. I was lucky that the gallery ArteUparte team sought me out for an individual show, and when the date was set, I knew I had a goal to reach with all my effort.
An artists paints, investigates, practices and draws nearly every day, because it is what you like to do and how you make your living, but the work sits in thestudy, in your notebook, and no one sees it, except yourself. But when there is a goal, a specific date on the calendar, an exhibition in mind, that is when all your work makes sense.
The aim is to show your work in public and glean the impressions of those attending th show, to have that feedback in person. For me, it is very interesting and enriching.
Thinking the exhibition, planning, selecting the works, creating a coherent group of pieces. Hard and interminable work, but passionate.
In this show I exhibit works done along three years. The majority are very recent, but I have work no one has seen, although I considered it ready to be shown, and it is valid and current. I reviewed it taking into account all the styles and techniques I have been working with these years and chose the best.
For the inauguration I prepared a panel to make a live-painting exhibition. The gallery ArteUparte is located in the Hall of the Tabakalera building in Donosti, and it is a place that is constantly being crossed by people. There are terraces for a coffee, benches on which to sit, it is roomy and welcoming. At the time of painting there was a crowd of people of all ages, many small children with their parents, young people and elderly ones. Then I appeared armed wiht two rollers and two trays, prepared to improvise something because I did not know what I was going to draw.
I was nervous, but in control. It was a period of utter concentration and being led by a tool with the end of making a good drawing and a good show. The latter is easy because people are amazed taht without a sketch and using only a roller i am capable of doing something like this. It is not easy and it is very effective, and I love doing it.
It is something that I discovered years ago with my stubborness of using a single tool to paint. Sometimes a brush, others a roller and in that self-limiting excercise gave fruit, that are now mature and is sweet.
I enjoyed seeing how all these people, specially the youngest ones were amazed, as if they were watching someone take a rabbit out of a hat.
I travelled to Donosti a few days before the opening to check on how it was prepared and make sure everything came out well, and the best way is to do it yourself.
Working with the ArteUparte people was fun and soon things began to flow. Paul and Iñaki are great.
As I said before, the best of the exhibitions are the inaugurations. There is where you see the reacton of people to your work, where they can ask you directly about it ad also when you can ask them and come to conclulsions, and meet interesting people and it is marvelous to have this experience.
On the vinyl that gave entrance to the exhibition it said:
“In a very probable future human beings will be less sensitive and empathetic while robots will be more human than us..
These are fragments of robot lives; moments full of vitality, sparks, connections and disconnections, errors and accidents that take place in all kinds of situations. We humans are lost but will have our sensitive robots to remind us of how we were.
Robots that will have souls, the souls we did not know how to keep.”
I was lucky that part of my family could come to see me. Having my family, and specifically my mother, there; that they could participate and see all these years of work hung on the gallery walls, I think it was one of the most exciting things I have lived in my life. It made me very happy
Speaking of how people react, I loved verifying that it had been a good idea to show the step-by-step process of the engravings I showed. Each plate I carved and beside it, the corresponding impression could be seen, and finally, the end result. lot of people congratulated me for the courage of showing the process of my work.
Personally, the process is what I enjoy most, and showing it, the viewer participates, and can value the finished work better, giving it greater value. I am very interested in the processes of other artists and thought it was a good idea to put it up on the gallery wall. I lost space and had to forego showing other work, but I gained in meaning.
All this and much more passed during those magical days spent in Donosti, and I will remember them always. I hope you like this post and that you can visit it. I think you will like it.
Robot Souls.
November 2019 at:
Plaza de las Cigarreras 1. Donosti.
PD: I have to thank Fran Picazo without whom this exhibition would not have been possible, and all my family who has supported me during all this time. Thanks to Carlos and Carol for the translations and to my brother Deih for the teacher advice. Thanks to Mr. Marmota for his good work with screen printing and thanks to TOF for the vinyl. Together you have made this dream possible.