Artists: José Ramón Amondarain, Katinka Bock, Leandro Feal, Esther Gatón
Exhibition title: You May Come Full Circle
Venue: CIBRIÁN, San Sebastian, Spain
Date: September 10 – November 13, 2021
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and CIBRIÁN, San Sebastian
For the inauguration of its new space, CIBRIÁN is delighted to gather the work of José Ramón Amondarain, Katinka Bock, Leandro Feal and Esther Gatón.
The exhibition sheds light on key topics in these artists’ works but also on the recent history of the gallery. Taking is title from Gil-Scott Heron’s cover of Bill Callahan’s “I’m new here”* (2010), in which the idea of the return and the beginning are mingled, in a pace similar to a season which repeats itself in its own fragility. You may come full circle spans a variety of mediums, gestures and textures which attest to both the repetition and renewal in the work of these four artists.
After a long hiatus, José Ramón Amondarain returns to painting with two new works on canvas. One of them, painted on a large canvas, a hallmark of the grand Expressionist gesture, suggests painting at its most contingent and uninhibited. Instead, the words significamentoso (significant) and sin (without) appear stamped repeatedly across their surfaces playfully alluding to the weight and repetition of the banal. In his new series Green Havana, Leandro Feal borrows the immediacy of vernacular photography to immerse the viewer in a reality distorted by the use of hashish, which is strictly prohibited in Cuba. Feal’s unique imagery subtly underlines the coercion exerted by the Cuban government, reminding the viewer of the many voices still being silenced. Such is the case with Hamlet Lavastida, the jumping silhouette figure and Feal’s friend who is currently incarcerated for political dissent. This photography relates to the figure of the fallen angel, a character which inspired the new work by Esther Gatón. Gatón’s large canvases are dyed with roots, wood and iron sulfate, shadowing her abstract drawings in a rich, black pigment. By repeating the dyeing process many times, Gatón creates a work in which various layers become visible. To make this series, the artist immersed herself in her London studio, not much bigger than the canvases themselves, causing a self imposed loss of orientation. The forms of these drawings are the result of Gatón’s sensitive reaction to this dizziness. Katinka Bock is a sculptor who works consistently with the relationships between space and objects. She is drawn to the tension formed by “making a tango step between what is random and what is managed”. Here the artist shows a glazed ceramic disk recalling the turntable of a record player. Sometimes we listen to the same song over and over again.
*Turn around, you may come full circle and be new here again.
With this inaugural exhibition, the gallery turns its attention to its new neighborhood. In both past and present manifestations, we aim to continue and strengthen an ongoing dialogue between groundbreaking international artists and the local community.
