PREEXISTENCIAS - José Arias

17 April - 16 May

Vital energy

For the past ten years, José Arias’ (Gijón, 1953) public exhibitions in Porto, Gijón, Madrid or Berlin launched the work by one of the most independent Asturian painters of the 20th century to the place it belongs. An always sociable author who considers reflection, technique and intellect to be essential elements for creation.

His works has come to respond to those guidelines from compositions with connotations of landscape that flow through an instinct far from figurative anecdotes, resting in the most pure sensitivity. Spilling is, in this sense, his favourite technique, because in its expressive essence it contains that force that Arias pursue since the beginning of his large career. The spilling of acrylics, ink and other media on different supports (paper, board, canvas…) is to the painter not only a methodological commitment, but a vital one, that allows him to work in depth with different artistic genres.

So, his recent paintings are filled with harmony but there is no mannerism in them, they draw towards colour and its dynamic-sensitive effects; flowing, on the panels, towards life itself, in intimate procedures that are in need of a notable physical effort and they are very sensible, becoming accomplices of the spectator. Infinite spaces and exquisite shades, thinned and varnished, return the reflexes of chance manipulated skilfully in order to compose magical emotions in space.

His eternal experimental and rebel spirit has now brought him a new vital and creative phase which, respecting the mentioned guidelines and maintaining that same faith is beauty, austerity and sentiment, is overflowed by new gestures and chromatic paths. Flowing references to other Norths are to be found here, between fantasy and reality. Norths of white and cold scent, pure north, melancholy and a potentially renovated energy. Or maybe it is the south wind; an, Antarctic South, without doubt, a solitary place that in any case only intends to keep on affirming that suffering, love, sadness, crying and surrender are expressed through drippings from the beginning of time.

Ángel Antonio Rodríguez