The entrance door of the Merayo Foundation reopened this Wednesday to kick off, one more year, a vast program of artistic and cultural activities, in which plastic and visual arts exhibitions will alternate with conferences, book presentations or music concerts. In this new event, the Foundation’s spaces renew the ritual of encounters between art, creators and the public.
In the emblematic chapel he exhibits his work Enrique Guzpena, a painter from León with a consolidated career, who hangs a collection of paintings called ‘Encuentros’, because in it the painter wanted pieces from different periods to engage in a fruitful dialogue, articulated around some of the plot themes that have been present in his creative becoming. Imaginator of spaces that contain shapes, Guzpeña’s aesthetic integrates geometric symbolism with intense color. Neither more nor less than the world of concepts mediated by that of emotions.
The ‘Paintings and collages’ of Dolores Bosch endow the antechapel with a magical and unreal atmosphere, since unusual figurations are present in this representational set: eccentric and metamorphic characters that coexist with signs of linear order and with undulating and rhythmic graphs, close to an automatic pseudo-writing, that link with their world interior, and even beyond, with a mythical world. The abstract language of surrealist overtones, together with the flatness of the chromatic fields and the spontaneity of the lexicon, place this work in the formal and stylistic orbit of the avant-garde.
‘Form and construction’ is the enigmatic work of Jaume Rocamora (Tortosa, 1946) based on the order and containment typical of geometric abstraction, a current of which this author is one of its most genuine representatives today, in Spain. His work links with the European tradition of avant-garde non-representational painting movements, based on the line –Malevic’s Constructivism, Mondrian’s Neoplasticism or the rationalist approaches of the Bauhaus– and to which, after years of activity, he has remained faithful and has provided special and innovative techniques and materials.
Angela Merayo It exhibits in the hall and staircase the series called The Music of Silence, which is dedicated to and inspired by the millennium of the Císter. Made in 1998, it uses watercolors and Chinese ink, a technique that is scarce in his production, but very suitable for plastically interpreting the aspirations of austerity, spirituality and transcendence of this reformed order. Works that are embedded in lyrical abstraction in which chromatic stains and figurative references of attenuated gestures, suggest archetypal forms of Cistercian architecture and its white and transcendent light.
The collective exhibition of sculptors brings together the following creators: Antolin Alvarez Chamorrois a prolific sculptor, heterogeneous in the use of materials, who on this occasion brings two works to the show: ‘Unidos’ (walnut wood on an iron base) in which the magnificent carving work sustains a no less interesting meaning conceptual, and ‘Help’, a complex sculptural ensemble made of walnut wood, iron and rope.
The work of Carlos Cuenllas, common in the courtyard of the Foundation, is manifested in a wide range of contemporary sculptural expressions, both in the use of materials –industrial materials, waste…– as well as in conceptual and metaphorical fields. For this occasion he has assembled his minimalist Setal.
Cosme Paredes This time he contributes a small piece called Sower, which, made with his usual technique of iron plates assembled as a collage, entails a more static proposal and reaches a level of emotion higher than that of his usual animal house.
Mariano Gutierrezcompletes his contribution with the works titled Camino a Ítaca and La mujer de Vitrubio, made with rods of stainless steel and filled with colored epoxy resin. In both the characteristic stylization, the formal synthesis and the symbolic distance from the ground are maintained.
To the ‘Homeless’, of Javier Robles who has his “domicile” in the garden of the Foundation, is joined this year by Arre, the character (boy) who plays with a wooden horse (stick and head), from the series of traditional games. Representative piece of his work with clear volumes and full of tenderness.
The young Leonese sculptor Juanjo Feral exhibits silhouettes of Ballerina and Greyhound, made with pieces of iron and brass within the figurative tradition; They respond to the concept of a diaphanous interior that highlights the dialectic between matter and transparency, between the covering and the essence.
The Merayo Foundation is especially excited about this new exhibition that will remain open until October 31.