PRELUDIOS – INTERLUDIOS

Interludes as Transitions

For years, the painting of José María Yturralde placed us on the relational boundary between the artistic universe and the proximity of science. Yet within his works, the scientific concealed the structure of its very reason for being, absorbed as a necessary nutrient through which the threads of the aesthetic work were woven.

From the second to the fourth dimension, Yturralde’s practice unfolded without ever losing its artistic direction, like a Renaissance challenge in pursuit of knowledge, channelled through the laboratory, where what was always at stake was not so much the solution to a problem as the enigma of a succession of unknowns behind which the passion for the progress of cognition constantly advanced.

It is not that he established a fundamentally epistemological discourse, but rather a framework traversed by questions, in which partial answers gave way to a new situation filled with different possibilities. An open space extending across long periods, from the end of the 1960s through to the close of the following decade. The “impossibility” of what was perceived acted as a stimulus within the pictorial space, followed by three-dimensional figures capable of taking flight, as a permanent enigma posed within natural space.

It is possible that the genesis of Yturralde’s work stems from a concern with emptiness. Understood as a primordial absence upon which the slightest variation acquires great intensity. In any case, it seems undeniable that throughout his work he establishes a dialectical relationship with presence, from whose tensions many of his works emerge.

But this is not the only element upon which the determining values are articulated, since in his paintings—especially from 1985 onwards—time acquires the nature of an event. The “strong” line inhabits not so much emptiness as the space upon which it interacts. Colour shifts and expands, occupying an inevitable unfolding. Within this progression, the boundary between existence and nothingness dissolves and, following the law of the inexorable transformation of energy, the pictorial surface acquires the nature of a narrative in which we do not know whether a “before” exists, but in which we undoubtedly witness an “after.” It was a period in which temporality lacked measure while affirming its presence. The scientific universe gave way to a philosophy of existence in which the artist merely presented us with the plausibility of his newly born concerns.

With the beginning of our decade, he considered a different approach through a series he called Preludes. Perhaps because of an affinity with the musical term, which so often comes not so much to announce as to summarise the work. For Yturralde, at that moment, pictorial space continued to be that of an intervention onto which he nonetheless incorporated transgressive variables: the appearance of uncertainty and surprise, instability, displacement, or the unease of asymmetry. Gradually achieving an encounter with a more humanised painting, within its immaculate purity.

Nevertheless, despite these incursions, there remains a conscious desire to stay close to metaphor, probably because he does not wish to abandon the radical perfection of language, while at the same time refusing to renounce a transcendent approach. We must not forget that we are faced with an artist who transforms his practice into an existential continuum from which he does not wish to detach himself.

Optimising space through mastery of procedure remains a ritual—fortunately always unfinished—around which gravitates the unfolding of a distinct creation, developed and coherent with painting itself.

(…)

The meticulous purity of these works introduces us, if possible, into a metaphorical universe of even greater intensity. Initially, the meaningful connection between the geometric forms composing them has varied in such a way that both the aesthetic structure and the visual equivalents have undergone a different projection. The relationship between the planes that make up the surface of the canvas is of lower contrast, which we do not interpret as equivalent to a reduction in intensity. Quite the contrary: through subtle nuance, it draws us into a deeper mystery.

What is it that exists within space? What minimal variation, once introduced, alters the whole in a meaningful direction? Why does the slightness in the saturation of a geometric form qualitatively change the meaning of the work in a particular direction? We are faced not only with an epistemological challenge, but with a provoked reality that we must resolve according to our own experience—one that, in Yturralde’s current painting, reaches a high conceptual content open to interpretation.

In some cases, the clarity of the aura emerging from the sides introduces us to the metaphorical evocation of an eclipse or a dawn. Spaces of grandeur and surprise whose scientific logic cannot dispel their mystery. In others, it is the calm presence of an almost intuited structure that leads us to reflect upon the nuances of existence.

The dissolution of the limits of forms also constitutes the ambiguous provocation of their presence, while the alteration of flat colours through nuances of altered clarity suggests to us the arrival of a transparency, of an existence-through. Ultimately, of an indeterminate space-time relationship that settles upon the viewer as a projective attitude, as a transition.

We are not witnessing the disappearance of boundaries so much as the alteration of their relationships as configured within space. A polysemic place (surface, cosmos, absence, solitude) in which the artist finds the ambiguous referent through which to establish his relations.

We are confronted with the open exercise of meticulousness. With participatory provocation through—paradoxically—self-absorption. At the same time, we are faced with the harmonious conjunction of balance, sensuality, and transcendence.

Manuel Muñoz Ibáñez

(De José María Yturralde. Preludios -Interludios, 1997)