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