The exhibition “El origen es ahora/Jatorria orain da” (The Origin is Now), curated by Javier Balda, director of the Altxerri Gallery, is based on an idea by G. Didi-Huberman about the dialectic between images of the past and their reflection in the contemporary world which, since W. Benjamin, are also a rethinking of their aura and the interpretations that establish and question our current aesthetics. The Altxerri Gallery takes its name from the cave of the same name discovered in 1962, 17 km from Donostia-San Sebastián (Spain), which preserves a remarkable collection of paintings and engravings from the Magdalenian period and was declared a World Heritage Site in 2008 along with other caves in the Atlantic arc.

The exhibition brings together several artists whose works address this idea of the expression of the first, primary or primitive, alluding to various constant aspects of us as a species and culture. The artists see in that earlier time some mirror responses to our current ones: from the sign, the gesture and the symbol as personal identity or as a marking of space and territory, to the organic balance from signs, gestures and symbols as personal identity or as markers of space and territory, to organic balance with the sources of life, sex and nature; also the mythification of the image, our anthropomorphic feelings and our relationship with the animal world. All this as a framework without nostalgia for the past but fascinated and influenced by the enigma of those paintings, engravings and objects that are difficult to interpret, which suggest an approach to the elemental states of expressiveness, who knows how they are related to beliefs, rites and dreams or to sophisticated decorative and functional mimicry.

In this sense, weaving together the threads of time, Pilar Soberón present the installation “Seres primigenios”’ (Primitive Beings, 1997-2023), whose drawings form the skeleton of a large animal brought from another era; on its surface, the terrestrial geo-biological layer emerges, engraved with the vulnerability of forms of life. The different drawings on paper emerge like islands floating in space-time; they are terrestrial fragments filled with anthropomorphic beings, in which nature, the sacred, the animal, femininity and the mythological merge to recall a common origin. 

This union between past and present characterised the foundation of the gallery itself, which was created under the auspices of a familiar art form reinvented by the Gaur group in Gipuzkoa and other groups from the Basque School, with an interpretation of the past as its foundation. Prehistoric culture thus served as a link and stimulus for the present in a timeless endeavour. In this way, the art of yesterday is not alien to us and now places us in the same challenges of expression that will be the origin of our contemporary future.

Altxerri Gallery. Donostia (Spain)

Group exhibition:

Esther Ferrer / Elena Asins / Remigio Mendiburu / Joan Miró / Pilar Soberón / Jon Cazenave / A.R. Penck / Leire Lacunza / Sandro Chia / Txaro Fontalba / Pablo Donezar / Javier Muro / Juan Aizpitarte / Juan Luis Goenaga / Hilario Bravo / Nadia Barkate

30 June 2023 – 9 September 2023

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/871906194

listado de la obra

>