Un número 72, Paula Valdeón. Tönnheim Gallery

There is a city that unfolds in layers, a Madrid that is superimposed on itself, where the stories of what has been lived amalgamate in the veins of time. The work of Paula Valdeón Lemus is a journey through these contours, a gaze that lingers in the details, in the interstices of the city that, by dint of their everyday nature, have become invisible. Her practice is based on the exploration of urban memory and the materiality of the places we inhabit. For her project Un número 72, the artist presents a series of works that invite us to penetrate the biography of a building, to pay attention to that which once was and which, under the artist’s attentive gaze, is transformed into something new.

Valdeón has turned the texture of spaces into his most intimate language. This time, her gaze rests on number 72 Calle Mayor. There, in the former home of the Señores de Luzón, the artist notices the echo of a past that persists in the 19th-century modernist tiles designed by the ceramist Daniel Zuloaga and in the ornamental paintings of the painter Álvaro Alcalá Galiano. In the manner of Benjamin’s flâneur, whose wanderings through the streets of the city constitute a search for his own subjectivity, the artist wanders through number 72 in search of elements that reveal its history. Valdeón’s gaze traverses spaces, dialogues with time and breaks it down. Her practice unfolds as a sensitive archaeology where the materials rescue that latent memory.

Using techniques that combine raster and pixel, the artist dissects the motif of the peacock, that symbol of splendour that is now fragmented and reconfigured into abstract compositions. Historical motifs are thus re-signified through a contemporary sensibility. The result is an almost schematic framework of soft tones that contrast with the exuberance of the original ceramic design. The pieces take on a haptic quality, with textures reminiscent of bas-relief and architectural moulding. The tactile is integrated with the visual to point to the fragility of the built and the beauty that resides in the small. Using the plastic language that characterises his work, Valdeón focuses on what is hidden and proposes a reflection on what is experienced in the places we pass through without stopping to look.

Each piece in Un número 72 is a fragment of history, a testimony of how time has transformed these private spaces into public ones. Valdeón’s work confronts us with our own relationship with the city, with the way we move through it, with what we choose to see and what we prefer to ignore. Buildings, as witnesses to the passage of time, contain stories that are not always evident, but are there, waiting to be revealed. This project reflects Valdeón’s commitment to an aesthetic of detail, to the need to dwell on what remains unnoticed. The pieces invite the viewer to walk through the gallery with the same delicacy with which the artist has explored number 72 Calle Mayor. The group of works is a tribute to the memory of the city, to those corners that still keep the traces of past lives. Like a murmur, Valdeón’s work urges us to listen to what has always been there, waiting to be discovered.

– Clara Derrac Soria