Nicolás Ortigosa. Works 2002–2018

Nicolás Ortigosa (Logroño, 1983) presents a group of artworks made between 2002 and 2018, showing sixteen years of his artistic career at Bombas Gens Centre d’Art. 

This project is part of a series that belongs to the Per Amor a l’Art Collection Divine comedy (2005-2014): an interpretation of Dante Alighieri’s oeuvre, also divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. The series consists of 89 drawings and engravings of different techniques. It reflects on the mental images that Ortigosa projected as a result of the reading of Alighieri’s work. The varied formats and medium are related to the notes the artist impulsively made on whatever surface he had on hand. Therefore the drawings inspired by each of the scenes are, as a result, more lyrical than illustrative. Although they seem to respond figuratively, the way in which the series take shape places Ortigosa’s artistic practice within a drawing tradition linked to the abstract language. 

The exhibition showcases other representative works of the artist, including more recent drawings and engravings. These works, varying in sizes, were made between 2015 and 2018. They allow us to observe how Ortigosa’s drawing “returns—in the words of Ángel Calvo Ulloa, author of an essay for the exhibition catalogue—to a post-war gesture, aligning with the obsessive lines of Hans Hartung, or with the ability to hit the rock bottom as Zoran Music did when showed us that Goya’s Aquelarre could also turned into Dachau”.  

It also presents a selection from the series Covered paintings (2002-2018) for the first time. The artist made the decision to cover with black oil all his production on canvas—hence the name of the series which translates into “covered paintings”—made since 2002: a total of 115 works that the artist has thus turned into a single work, transforming it into an interesting game reflecting on the hidden and the revealed, and therefore forcing the spectator to intuit the lines of previous work under the new surface. 

The exhibition, curated by Nuria Enguita and Vicent Todolí, is accompanied by a catalogue that includes texts by Ángel Calvo Ulloa and Julio Hontana. 

OPENING: 16th of May 2019 at 20h*Credits of pictures and courtesies attached to the texts icon.