Untitled. Mixed media. Variable dimensions. Atelier Solar.
Untitled. Mixed media. Variable dimensions
28 Nov. to 7 Dec. 2024. Organised by: Atelier Solar
Karolina Esteban, Irene Ferrero, Carlos García, Eila Luque and Violeta Vizuete.
The exhibition ‘Untitled. Mixed media. Variable dimensions’ is an example of the works that take place in the studio of Atelier Solar, located in Arturo Soria 39, Madrid. There, this group of artists made up of Karolina Esteban, Irene Ferrero, Carlos García, Eila Luque and Violeta Vizuete investigate their own practices and encourage encounters with the group.
Atelier Solar has carried out projects such as the African Creative Residencies, with which we have brought in 2019 four artists from four countries such as Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa and Angola in two-month residencies, with accommodation and studio, exhibiting their work at Galería Nueva. We have also carried out two editions of Curator meets Artist, which consists of hosting and accompanying European curators for 15 consecutive days and organising tours of artists’ studios so that they can get to know their work and these artists can internationalise their artistic practice. In 2020 we held Salón Brand New, an exhibition of artists recently graduated or in their final year of their degree from nine universities from all over Spain, which took place in Conde Duque. In addition, we have held exhibitions every year since 2015 with artists from our studios in places such as the now defunct Espacio Trapézio, the JustMAD fair and Galería Nueva, where this selection of works is now on show.
‘Untitled. Mixed media. Variable dimensions’ brings us closer to practices as diverse as Irene Ferrero’s figuration, Eila Luque’s material experimentation, Karolina Esteban’s photography on textile and other surfaces, Violeta Vizuete’s conceptual exploration and Carlos García’s performative painting. Such a diversity of techniques, concerns, themes and formats are displayed in this exhibition that brings together a group of young people who explore their own way of making art, sharing a working space and a time for discussion.
Irene Ferrero’s pictorial series explores the latent tensions between the instinctive and the structured, between the ferocity of the animal impulse and the delicacy of the contemplative. Through a visual language charged with contrast and symbolism, the works unfold a dialogue about force, conflict and truce, as if each stroke participates in the emotional alchemy that transforms the familiar into something disturbingly strange.
The disturbing nature of these images evokes a proximity that is never quite comfortable. Colour acts as an alchemical agent, catalysing emotions that oscillate between the visceral and the sublime, while the animal forms become metaphors for a wider drama: the precarious balance between drive and reason, between the visible and the hidden.
For Karolina Esteban, life is like an embroidered cloth. We spend the first part of our lives on the beautiful side of the embroidery, but the second part of our lives is spent on the other side. It is less pleasant, but we see how the threads are arranged.
According to the artist, as we grow up we tend to forget or obscure the memory of our true essence: the beautiful part of embroidery. We are forced to face adversity, adulthood overwhelms, doubts grow, fears lurk and the need to assume radically necessary responsibilities arises. But what really matters is that the fabric is ours, that it belongs to us.
The project ‘Skins’, by Eila Luque, is born from the union of medicine and art. The artist investigates skin diseases, scars and everything that encompasses what is socially accepted as unsightly, everything that is normally hidden. She tries to visualise it and see the beauty of all that it contains and surrounds. Addressing pain and reparation. It is a work in which abstraction is the protagonist, but with multiple figurative nuances.
Within the project, different possibilities of creation are differentiated and investigated, without having a specific purpose, but rather to arrive at works that arise from trial and error, thus giving meaning to the intention of the project.
‘Intravenous Hardware’ is Violeta Vizuete’s project, an open work that has been built up over the years in the form of an illustrated diary-record: a large graphic archive of her own.
The author has carried out, forcing herself to the maximum, a narration through images alone, in an attempt to tell what passes through her nerves (or even everyone’s) with a certain freedom, in exercises of almost automatic creation. A large part of this archive is constructed by recombining ready-made images (reference photographs, magazines, cuttings) found in different parts of the city.
Carlos García quotes Ray Loriga to describe his work: ‘Round pieces don’t fit anywhere. Round pieces bounce and being round and bouncing is like being a tennis ball. It’s much better to be a meat hook than a tennis ball. The tennis ball can’t grab anything and has nothing to grab on to’.
Galería Nueva Carabanchel. C/ Alejandro Sánchez 94, 28019 Madrid