2024 VON BARTHA BASEL

Te regalaré un abismo, 2024
Watercolor paper 300 grs., graphite pencil, acrylic and gouache paint, hardware
180 units, A4 size, overall dimensions variable

Te regalaré un abismo (Curtains 1-3), 2024
100% cotton fabric, cotton batting, threadwork and hardware
Approx. 206 x 142 cm each.

Installation views, offices of Galerie von Bartha, Basel / December, 2024 – TBD

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Te regalaré un abismo (I Will Give You an Abyss) comes from a poem by Roberto Bolaño, and in my case it is also the title of a new body of work. In a turn towards the origins, towards the basic and elemental (color, shape, figure, and background) I propose a series of works on paper, hand painted, with cut figures, empty figures, window figures, which can be combined and confronted with others, creating almost infinite variations and possibilities. Each work is an interpretation of the same grid, and this simplicity is a game, a method, a system, which is reinvented each time. The game is also open, I use it, or others can use it, for example, in a workshop with students. They are also interactive since the possibility of searching for new and infinite combinations is always open, by the institution, owner or public, when the conditions are there. The ludic aspect addresses infinity as well as emptiness, literally and metaphorically. In parallel to this, looking at a series of works with cuts, in line, or in groups, the figures behave as an alphabet, a language, simultaneously ancestral and futuristic. The colors are direct, some bright, others opaque, some elegant, others psychedelic.

The main group of this new series consists of 180 works on 300 gr. watercolor paper, size A4, painted with acrylic paint and gouache, with figures/cuts that are individual solutions to the same grid. These are currently being exhibited at the office of Galerie von Bartha, Basel.

The last group of images show Te regalaré un abismo (Curtains 1-3), which occupy the meeting room at von Bartha. Commissioned as a long-term installation, they are made using quilting techniques, each having 3 layers which are joined using mechanical sewing and hand-embroidery.
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Variations, larger in size and with a different display and use of space, will be soon exhibited at Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago de Chile, and at Proyectos Ultravioleta, in collaboration with Beam Editions, Nottingham UK.

Te regalé un abismo was produced with the support of FONDART, Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage, Government of Chile

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