INTERIORS/INTERIOARE
Text : Liviana Dan (text from Arta Magazin 30.01.2018).
Victoria Art Center, Bucharest.
14.09.2017 – 10.10.2017
Arantxa Etcheverria’s show, opened at Victoria Art Center in Bucharest at the end of the last year,
was succint, beautiful and brimming with light (…)
Acquainted with the avant-garde and soviet constructivism, Arantxa Etcheverria’s investigation expands to Frederick Kiesler, mirrors, projections, the dream-reality syntagm and the Californian Light and Space Movement of 60ies. She goes from scenography to a long term project of functional and spiritual structures, of strongly geometrical forms. A daring statement recalling Kiesler’s bravery: form follows function, function follows vision and vision follows reality. Those who see her work begin inhabiting them. And a design kit becomes the tools for this habitation.
Arantxa Etcheverria attempts to reach a maximum of meaning with a minimum of means. Her artwork (paintings, drawings, collages, objects, sculptures, installations) are exclusively, perfectly finished, firms and simple, with a mostly severe composition. Their solitary individuality recalls the structures of the relatively concentrated history of minimalism. Arantxa Etcheverria prefers wood and repetitive structures. There is, in her work, a cultivated sense of colour: the pink niche, Matisse’s colours turned urban, argumentative, liberal, savvy. Colour, similar to the “early morning light” can alter structure. Everything becomes purely retinal, absolutely tactile.
Intellectual rigor always allows for a multiple level poetic and for certainty of language. Arantxa Etcheverria focuses on a what is truly important: form, proportion, colour. And on an ineffable quality witch we could call “presence”.
STUDIO/STRUCTURES
Curator : Ruxandra Balaci
Anexa MNAC (National Museum of Contemporary Art), Bucharest.
29.04.2013 – 04.06.2013
The studio as a place of solitary, uncertain endeavours, of ambitious explorations, of tensions generating projections and structures in real virtual spaces. The studio as a place marked by the vision of Marcel Iancu, a remarkable architect and designer of the inter-war period, whose presence-absence is profoundly subliminally assimilated by the artist. The fascination of the oscillation between the figurativ and non-figurativ, between deformation and reformation, between structure formation and de-structuring. An art of contrasts and balances, crystallized critically in the atmosphere of the Bahaus/deco studio, a generic hybridization taking place under the auspices of a masked Manichean battle between the exacerbated temperamental dynamic and the balanced refinement.
Between the serene asceticism and the contained drama. One should also note the visible references to the post-communist turbo-architecture, to op-art and the minimum conceptual, to Vasarely and Paolini, and not least, to the albertian/Albert cube-a mise-en-abime of the notions of tri-dimensional space. Through the door-grids-frameworks, fragile transits towards a fourth dimension are suggested…
TRACES and ARCHITECTURES
Text : Tiberiu Adelmann
Baril Gallery, Paintbrush Factory, Cluj
3.10.2014 – 10.11.2014
Arantxa Etcheverria is preoccupied to create networks, dots linked by straight or curves lines in a complex formalism that raises directly (as tautological as it may sound !) from Euler Theorems or graph's theory and all that stuff (graphs= an ordered pair of finite non-voided multitudes of elements : knots or tips and edges or arcs, according to Wikipedia).
One might initially think that the networks Arantxa Etcheverria draws are meant to be definitions of the space, forms far away from savant templates, lines deliberately kept clean, whose poor symmetry, though suggests a more elaborate driving reason.
Simple, therefore insufficient ! Because under the power of the network lines we decipher as in a delicate engraving the fine lace-works of the architectural details, cornices or frontons or entire silhouettes, of some of Art Deco houses in Bucharest, in a process of affectionate recovering or, more complex even, of sketching (pun intended, we are talking about drawings) some cultural relationships.
After all, any network knot represents the intersection of lines, which in their turn, unite other knot points.
The discretion by the means of witch the background objects are figured doesn't hide though the obsession for one of the houses designed by Marcel Iancu (the Solly Gold Building), which become significant both for the subtlety and the rational component of her art. There is no doubt that the site-specific pieces and installations form the core of her artistic approach.In other of her works – somewhere in her correspondence, a naughty typo calls them “tablurii” (in Romanian, something like “paintings”) – she inserts silhouettes whose gray shades give them an unearthly appearance and therefore an odd sensuality. Some other times, her templates are presented on surfaces resembling the prints on the linoleum used in the country kitchens, a contrast so violent that it suggests a process of exorcising the kitsch. Finally, her art installations are superpositions of geometrical forms who repeat the details of some of the metallic constructions that the artist captured photographically in her (probably melancholic, definitely solitaire) expeditions throughout the city. Still, all of these elements are united by a certain accuracy of the work, by a certain cleanliness which accentuates the lucidity you suspect behind the composition, something that engenders the comforting feeling of safety.
ARANTXA-METRY: THE AXIOM OF A SENSITIVE GEOMETRY
Text : Silviu Padurariu
Unrest/Bucharest
3.10.2014 – 10.11.2014
The point has no mass or volume. This humble point is the gateway through which an infinity of straight lines that support a plane could cross, and an infinity of planes will support a space. These newly emergent planes and spaces gain palpable shape and volumes, yet the point remains with no mass, with no volume. Since Pythagoras and up to the present, people have been seeking, whether in art or science, for sensitive and material structures among these pure and abstract coordinates in order to establish a stable reference mark on the delicate floating area between the subjective imaginary and the objective reality.
On this indefinite, transparent and untraceable, but necessary area between the subjective and objective reality, Arantxa Etcheverria proposes a false geometry in a false painting, with false extras. She imitates and performs the classic graphical process by means of drawn, metallic, objectual or photographic threading architecture. Most formulas attempt to keep a classic framed picture, of a painting, with no canvas and no oils. The canvas surface is replaced by our own convention of our internal surface, while the drawing and the color are replaced by pure abstract rhythms and patterns, of materials closer to sculpture or conceptual art. The discourse is emotional in an elementary, axiomatic key. Without theorizing, narrating or searching for a purpose or cause. Without a time dimension. It locks a moment of one’s own subjectivity, own identity. The point with no mass and no volume becomes real just in these various and variable identifying convergences between the objective, exterior reality and the subjective, sensorial, internal reality. Arantxa, the name, conjures up at the primary level the meaning of thorn, spike – the sensitive point of a sharp angle formed between two lines which tend to move away from each other, to become parallel. The sharp and punctiform, steady identity imprints onto the objective reality signs and traces of a specific structure, equally common and personal.
At the same time, beyond the exercise of identity and the transparent process of fixing the own pattern into the objective reality, can also be ‘read’ as a process of re-studying the history of art, revealing ‘traces’ of Joseph Kosuth, Donald Judd or Sol LeWitt. However, the construct Traces, on the whole, puts together the tools of several forms of expression and means, from classic paper or printed canvas to the independent object, from minimalist sculpture to conceptualism. The sum of these particular geometries defines an individuated, balanced, organised territory that does not contain a specific message, a distinct subject or meaning. We are privileged to see through the works and not beyond them.
GIVEN A RANDOM POINT
Curators : Larisa Crunteanu and Xandra Popescu
Atelier 35, Bucharest
03.03.2015 – 30.03.2015
Or about the imponderability of a point.
Fullstop.
The point as a form of ultimate abstraction. Stripped of materiality or dimension.
Actually, has anyone ever seen a point ?
Although it represents a basic concept of geometric analysis, when subjected to individual analysis, we realize that the point lacks any sort of content (F.Klein, Elementary Mathematics from an Advanced Standpoint : Geometry). By the way, about the point, ever since Euclid, we know that it has no parts.
A void full of meaningful at the intersection between mathematical nominalism and idealism, between geometry and philosophy, the point is all around us and yet nowhere. If two worlds were to intersect in a single point, they could have everything or nothing in common.
Such a point can be found inside the eyeball, where the image of the world is inverted to then be projected upside down on the retina.
Situated uncertainly inside the pupil this point may glide depending on the plane of sight. This comprises two worlds – one that lies ahead of us and one beyond our sight, yet remaining outside of it.
Let's call it the-point-in-witch-the gaze-contains-itself.
A big-bang moment inside being : in which the image of the whole gathers in a minuscule point to then explode and make all the sense we give to the world. In this point, the entire content captured by vision acquires the same value on the same informational plan – the material blends in with its shadows, and emptiness is confused with fullness.
So here we are in a paradoxical situation : the point, lacking any content, becomes the material manifestation of a bipolar representation.
Arantxa Etcheverria creates a series of geometrics situations, intercepting instances of immanence in everyday life. Forms of conjunction between light and shadows, brought together in the same bidimensional plan.
Given a Random Point function as a waiting room for a new state of consciousness.
COMEDIA
Text : Suzana Dan
Art On Display, Musette Kube, Bucharest
15.10.2015 – 25.10.2015
Arantxa Etcheverria projects her artistic universe around her workshop, her physical presence being usually related to the structure of this place. We find the same principle applied in the case of a clothing store from the project Art On Display.
At first sight the store looks like a design type arrangement of a fashion brand. A closer look reveals a huge moving self-portrait of the artist upside down, wearing a striped blouse, a symbol along the centuries of people situated at the edge of social integration like prisoners, sailors and clowns. The playful environment is completed by a series of screen structures that display geometric patterns of urban windows.
A reverse theatre scenography of falling and loss. The artist hanging upside down brings up the image of the hanged man in the tarot deck whose positive significance is to sit crooked but talk straight. An ironical, awkward, scammer contemporary Arlecchino who is there just to ask uncomfortable questions. This position gives a different perspective, far away from conventional rigid concepts… one needs a moment of expectation and reflection… one need a break before moving further down their path.
ANATOMY
Text : Marius Tanasescu
Alert Studio, Bucharest
03.07.2014 – 25.07.2014
The recent work of Arantxa Etcheverria positions itself where three fields intersect : design, photography and video.
The design element of the video can be seen in the arbitrarily superimposed viewpoints of the Alert Studio, representing the temporal possibilities of the space.
In this way, space itself is dissected architecturally, according to unspoken rules, where the lines run this way and that, superimposed and transparent, to create a variety of forms.
The white square becomes the symbol of the white cube gallery and the concept of architecture itself, while the black lines represent the materialisation of the spirit of the space itself.
The video work is a dance of lines and contours, accompanied by the low of the txalapartei, a Basque musical instrument used in pagan rituals.
This photographic self-portrait at first appears to be a dreamlike one, but actually represents a state somewhere between sleeping and waking.
The space becomes a vivisection within a temporal vacuum, or rather, in a space disconnected to time.
CORNER
Curator : Liviana Dan
Calina Gallery, Timisoara
10.02.2014 – 14.03.2014
In contrast to digital and multimedia directions it can be argued that design/drawing has become a major parallel for contemporaneity. The artist who now work in a nonhierarchical manner with multiple practices, techniques and technologies have changed its role. The most important concepts of the contemporary design/drawing are intentionality and absence of barriers. The drawings may be sculptures, installations, they may incorporate video footage, and the Modil film used for making the image equally as important as the image itself. DESENUL SANS RIVAGE/THE SANS RIVAGE DRAWING is a platform about thinking in drawing, about contemporary design as an idea and a process, proposed by Calina Gallery to the artists Arantxa Etcheverria, Gili Mocanu Patricia Teodorescu, and Sebastian Moldovan.
Rational and academic in orientation, Arantxa Etcheverria starts from Marcel Iancu's concrete-contructivist project for the banker Solly Gold. The project contains rigorous questions about space, shape, and line. For her aesthetic investigations Arantxa Etcheverria systematically employs, as if she used a pattern, the compositional logic of the grille, of the geometrical configured grid, of the delicately serialized lines. Having a particular and elegant relationship with the minimalism, Arantxa Etcheverria proposes subtle irregularities in tone and texture, discretion of the diagrams and contemplative simplicity. Clear lines structure the composition, although behind the composition there is always a safety level.
