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

Collection

Boca, mano, ano [Mouth, Hand, Anus]

Image caption
DANIEL VERBIS

Boca, mano, ano [Mouth, Hand, Anus]

  • 1992
  • Mixed technique, pencil and masking tape on paper
  • 60 x 60 cm
  • Cat. D_155
  • Acquired in 1992
By:
Beatriz Herráez

Yolk (1992) and Mouth, Hand, Anus (1992) belong to different series produced by Daniel Verbis at the start of his career, just after he graduated from Salamanca University. The first of a group of 24 images using lines and dots in pale and watered-down colours. Undulating forms that recall cellular structures and irregular patterns are reminiscent of a visuality typical of science researchers, for example, the drawings by Santiago Ramón y Cajal based on his studies of the structure of the nervous system. In turn, Mouth, Hand, Anus shows a similar use of drawing and composition techniques. Here, he uses an irregular grid that focuses the viewer’s attention inside a surface painted in shades of ochre. This eye/anus pairing, taken from the readings of George Bataille’s work and his constant references to the human body and skin, made a strong comeback in Verbis’s later works. Both Yolk and Mouth, Hand, Anus were exhibited at the artist’s solo show at the Emilio Navarro Gallery in 1992.

Beatriz Herráez

 
By:
Beatriz Herráez
Daniel Verbis
León 1968

Daniel Verbis graduated in Fine Arts from Salamanca University. Since his first exhibition at the Art23CB Gallery (Salamanca) in 1990, his work has been noted for the use of an alphabet of unusual and unpredictable forms, an unclassifiable system of formal correlations packed with visual aphorisms, puns and wordplays. An output determined by the crisscrossing and intersection of drawing, painting, sculpture and text.

Verbis has often defined his painting as an ‘awkward’ practice. His work does not follow conventions or indeed any known exception, not even the dissent tolerated in the history of art after the first avant-garde movements of the previous century.

His best known works include large murals where images of different range and scale overlap and are camouflaged; his series of works on paper that recall scientific diagrams and histological outlines; and his objectified paintings, which tend to become confused with the structures that support them, with the rigging of the canvas.

Daniel Verbis has become a fixture on the private gallery circuit and on the institutional art scene. In 1997, his stand-out solo show was at the Drawing Centre in New York. Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Burgos Contemporary Art Centre (2004); the Patio Herreriano Museum (Valladolid, 2013); the Castilla y León Museum of Contemporary Art (León, 2006); and the Sala Amós Salvador (Logroño, 2016).

Beatriz Herráez

 
«Pon-d» (Madrid, 1992).
Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 3.