Valencia,
The production of the Madrid artist María Aranguren is characterized by her use of a small list of elements to achieve the greatest visual impact, an impact that does not involve spectacularity or aesthetic forcefulness: her works transmit meditation and seek to immerse the spectator in an atmosphere of silence. She delicately treats surfaces and materials (sometimes industrial, such as cellular polycarbonates, methacrylates and sheets with insulated channels), using color as a lyrical element with which to suggest hidden meanings.
Fifty of his creations from the last two decades, several unpublished, can be seen, from today until October, at the Valencian headquarters of the Bancaja Foundation: the “Genesis” exhibition brings together abstract compositions, mostly geometric, but others also associated to the lyrical aspect of this movement, in which this author shows how experimentation around the creative process, understood as a source of reflection but also as a game (in terms of compositional methods, use of color, questioning of the limits between figuration and abstraction), continues to be the driving force of his career.
The title of the exhibition refers to the relationships that he establishes in his works between order and chaos, chance and meticulousness, principles that he understands could have marked the origin of the world; also to his desire to interweave in some of these works concerns of artists of the past and present. The materials he uses range from those most traditionally linked to painting (canvas board) and cardboard or the aforementioned cellular polycarbonate, which he has used especially since 2008 and which, due to its lightness, has allowed him to develop pieces from the union of two plastic layers that generate hollow structures inside, intervened by Aranguren with different techniques and materials in each case and often with its characteristic lines, which contain signs, hieroglyphs, mysteries in their colors or repeated patterns that have to do with their ways of understanding the creative act based on their own values and beliefs and also from looking outside.
Curiosity and intuition lie behind the use and mixture of these materials, and an attentive eye will discover intentional contrasts: between those of organic origin, such as paper, and those that are inert, such as plastic. There is also no lack of references to music, which is sometimes a source of inspiration due to the potential universality of its harmony (music of the spheres) and other times, more structurally, due to its suggested rhythm – this author collaborates in Brouwer Trio concerts and creates stage designs for musical productions by Arte4.
The exhibition was curated by Gertrud Gómez, who has highlighted Aranguren’s growing tendency towards purification and distancing from the superfluous and above all her conviction that creative capacity is innate, that it grows with her practice and unites us all with our origins. .
An artist closely linked to Valencia (from 2006 to 2014 she directed the lametro room of the Generalitat), her pieces in Bancaja come from the Museu d’Art Contemporani Vicente Aguilera Cerni de Vilafamés, the Espai d’Art Contemporani de Ribarroja del Turia or the Cyes collections , L. Domingo Sanz, Saleta Rosón, OlorVisual and María Oriza Pérez.
María Aranguren. “Genesis”
BANCAJA FOUNDATION
Plaza de Tetuán, 23
Valencia
From June 27 to October 27, 2024
