Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

AMP 02

Image caption
PELLO IRAZU

AMP 02

  • 2004
  • Acrylic paint and masking tape on paper
  • 151 x 119 cm
  • Cat. D_325
  • Acquired in 2007
By:
Isabel Tejeda

Pello Irazu’s work has always been linked to the Formalist legacy left by Jorge Oteiza in the Basque sculpture scene. However, despite his constructivist roots, his output moved in directions in which that starting point was diluted and he questioned the conceptual and spatial nature of his work in relation to the viewer’s participation. An example of such experimentation with the link between the space occupied and the void is Nobody Told Me You Were Here (1992). The work is built using plywood, acrylic and vinyl paint, as a block with intermediate spaces eliminated and coloured. The sculpture is low and nuanced in its dimensions; it subverts the magnificence of earlier Basque sculpture and is seen as post-minimalist, a style which would remain a hallmark of Irazu throughout his artistic career.

AMP 01, AMP 02 and AMP 04 belong to the Fragments series (2004). Even though they do not use Irazu’s usual media — they are drawings made using paint and masking tape — they reflect the formal minimalism of the Basque school and are consistent with the rest of his output. The powerful right angles and the solid, primary colours that appear together with scattered, more gestural lines establish a continuity between the present and the exempt, between the objectual work and the concept behind the signifier. The same goes for 330 (1999), where the sutures between the blue and black give glimpses of lines that seek to describe a specific code perceptible only to the artist. Irazu’s graphic work acts as a speculum for the forms of his sculptures –featuring the same recurrent colour range and the use of masking tape– and is produced with the same intention: to shatter the viewer’s perception as to the process of creation and the relationship between space, work and observer. Irazu has often explained that space is much more than the place that objects occupy: this enables him to re-work the meaning of his pieces by reusing them temporarily in different exhibitions.

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Isabel Tejeda
Pello Irazu
Andoain (Gipuzkoa) 1963

Pello Irazu graduated from the Fine Arts Faculty at the University of the Basque Country in Leioa (1986), where he majored in Sculpture. Along with Txomin Badiola and Ángel Bados, Irazu is considered one of the most important figures within ‘new Basque sculpture’.

During the 1980s, Irazu began establishing the parameters that would feature throughout his career: limiting the size of his works in relation to his own physical possibilities, so that each piece focuses a performative act; or taking a heterodox approach as he reaches out to minimalism and to Oteiza, creating works with great material density that produce a spatial discontinuity wherever they are placed. In 1989, Irazu moved to London, and then in 1990 to New York thanks to a Fulbright Scholarship. He lived and worked there throughout the 1990s and regularly exhibited at the John Weber Gallery. He currently lives and works in Bilbao.

In Pello Irazu’s output the use of sculpture techniques and procedures has gradually increased, including such diverse materials as wood, Formica, cardboard, plastic and aluminium. He has also worked in mural painting and drawing, generating new spaces by means of friction between the materiality of his works and their perception. His ‘El muro incierto’ [‘The Uncertain Wall’] exhibition at Sala Alcalá 31 (Madrid, 2015) stands out in this trend. Playing with the specific features of the venue, he arranged several murals produced between 1991 and 2005 in the exhibition area and generated a broken, maze-like route that calls into question the experience and perception of viewers.

Pello Irazu has a long, international artistic career. His exhibitions include ‘Panorama’, a review of his career at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2017); ‘Pello Irazu. Fragmentos y durmientes’ [‘Pello Irazu. Fragments and Sleepers’], at Atrium – Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country (2003); ‘Vivir sin destruir’ [‘Living Without Destroying’], at the Koldo Mitxelena Kulturunea (San Sebastián, 2007); and ‘Studio’, at the Yancey Richardson Gallery (New York, 2014). Irazu has taken part in major group shows such as ‘Aperto’ at the Venice Bienniale (1990); ‘Future Perfect’, curated by Dan Cameron, at Heiligenkreuzerhof (Vienna, 1993); ‘Photodimensional’, at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, 2009); ‘Mínima resistencia. Entre el tardomodernismo y la globalización: practicas artísticas durante las décadas de 1980 y 1990’ [‘Minimum Resistance. Between Late Modernism and Globalisation: Artistic Practices in the 1980s and 1990s’], at the Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2013); and ‘(Ex)posiciones críticas. Discursos críticos en el arte español.1975-1995’ [‘Critical (Ex)positions. Critical Discourses in Spanish Art. 1975-1985’] organised by the Centre for Contemporary Art of Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, 2015).

Isabel Tejeda

 
«Pello Irazu. FOLDS. Sculptures and Drawings» (Madrid, 2004).
Pello Irazu Pello Irazu. PLIEGUES. Esculturas y dibujos, Madrid, Galería Soledad Lorenzo, 2004. Pello Irazu & Javier González de Durana Fragmentos y durmientes, Vitoria, Artium y Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa, 2004. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.