"Claiming Space" at Ansorena Gallery. Amalia Rubín.

"Claiming Space" at Ansorena Gallery. Amalia Rubín.

A diverse collection of paintings on wood constitutes the first major solo exhibition by Rafa de Corral (Bilbao, 1967) at Ansorena Gallery, following his participation in several group exhibitions organized by the Madrid gallery. "Claiming Space" is a dialogue halfway between reason and intuition, a dialectic of opposites that engages in a tacit communication between the individual and the environment they have constructed. Rafa del Corral's recent works, with their romantic stormy skies and dizzying perspectives of pronounced "horizontal drops," seem to be created from a metaphysical sentiment towards the landscape, which lends architecture an enigmatic air and at the same time, a solid, real, palpable quality of something that exists without truly being. The straight line (including that of the support itself) has been and is championed in these and other works by the Basque artist (let's remember the exhibition "Reasoned Structures" held in his place of residence, Valencia, just a few months ago), often immersed in the detailed analysis of basic constructive elements: mass, volume, proportion...

 

A Part of You Does Not Lie / mixed media on wood / 50 x 200cm / 2009

This foray into the third dimension sharpens the pure and in a Bauhaus sense, the inherently artistic and integral aspect of geometry as a syncretic expression of all arts: painting-architecture-sculpture. Contrary to what might initially seem predictable and even more surprising, the spaces reinvented by Rafa de Corral are impossible habitats to dwell in due to their dehumanized nature, yet they still remind us of certain utopian dwellings in the style of Le Corbusier. At the same time, they are far from Cartesian sterility and very close to those realms of surrealist estrangement that lack any real capacity to house life unless through the flight of the imagination. Concrete masses, cubes perforated or unfolded like giant cutouts in the middle of nowhere often fluctuate between the buildable and the sculptural, ultimately serving the purpose of arousing distant sensations in the viewer, instincts, fears, or desires long dormant in our most forgotten selves.

Through impeccable techniques in both drawing and painting, this extensive series of mixed media works on wood by Rafa de Corral achieves artistic challenges of profound lyrical, formal, and conceptual depth. All of this, without relinquishing solid artistic principles that evolve towards that inevitably uncertain and disconcerting future, but always present in the painting of this great contemporary artist.

The exhibition "Claiming Space" at Ansorena Gallery.

Amalia García Rubí. El Punto de las Artes. Madrid. October 2010.