Santander,
Born in 1984 in Cantabria and trained in both Fine Arts and Philosophy, Laura López Balza initially approached painting and drawing – these are not the only techniques she has worked on – from the desire to make them an alternative medium. of relationship and understanding of her environment in a broad sense (natural and social, objects, landscapes…), but also an instrument of self-knowledge; He explained to us when, several years ago, he stopped by our Signed section, that By spending long periods of time observing, deciphering and doing hermeneutics of what is the object of reference, the meanings of the forms are discovered and revealed, leading us to their essence.. Due to this intimate and daily conception of creation, its production includes satisfaction, play, fun, discovery, encounter, problem, responsibility, expression, introspection, knowledge, obsession, perspective and everything, house and world. Therefore, what escapes his thoughts and experiences, what we can understand by appearance and pose, would not have it.
Since its beginnings almost two decades ago, and also today, its compositions are populated by those themes that are not exhausted: everyday scenes, landscapes, portraits, dreamlike or evocative images of the rural; Nature, in fact, takes center stage in many of them in a more or less explicit way: it serves to refer to searches and fears that stem from their personal experiences but that usually refer to universal emotions, linked to different phases of the life cycle. life. They tend toward joy (of living) more than darkness and sadness; Faced with the exploration of the dark or punishing side of the human being, or simply of his experienced miseries, López Balza chooses – and his choice today is almost a crusade – to take the viewer’s gaze towards the luminous, the beauty of the ecosystems that persist. , the spring that is still distinguished from winter, and that holds more life than an inattentive perception can suspect.
Along this path, the key to her language is, without a doubt, color: never realistic, it is constantly related to those emotions that the author wishes to invoke, acquiring its own expressiveness, just like the forms. With each other, from these premises, it develops in a free and intuitive way, adopting spontaneity in the face of intention and allowing the tones and their design to flow according to the demands of each work.
We can see his most recent creations, until next February 8, at the Santander headquarters of the Juan Silió Gallery: Javier Ruiz Pérez curates the exhibition “The sun that I look at and tells me”, in which those freely inspired canvases await us in which the artist combines strokes close to the naïve and backgrounds, however vitalistic, adult.
In a first approximation, these works turn the viewer into a voyeur of figures, fields, vegetation that will delight him, but that he may not interpret; Given more time, you will appreciate that these scenes contain feelings that do not need academic precision to be summoned. Regarding her previous exhibition in this same space, the artist has decided to use oil paint, which has transformed the textures of the different planes, and applies a more careful treatment to the palette, pampering the qualities of its colors, magnetic protagonists. of these fabrics.
Laura López Balza. “The sun that I look at and it tells me”
JUAN SILÓ GALLERY
C/ Sol 45, ground floor
Santander
From December 12, 2024 to February 8, 2025
