Rubén Guerrero

Information

In his continuous exploration of the possibilities of painting, Rubén Guerrero has cultivated various languages, different facets and models of transferring the plurality of the real world to the canvas.

Guerrero’s painting is characterised by a planned work of overlapping layers of colour through compact brush-strokes with a fragmented pattern. With each layer he creates an opacity which outlines a complex field of juxtapositions, in which there are images of spaces, constructions and places, together with fragile and sublime parts of an almost idealised nature, including some quotes and lyrics from ballads which have to be interpreted in a meta- linguistic code. He slowly links together and juxtaposes different painting materials, understanding the painting as the dynamic result of a time process which is visibly expressed in the result and which captures the spectator’s gaze. In his work, and with the most absolute freedom, Guerrero brings together the most various and contradictory things, countering merely formal structures which enlarge the artist’s universe with a metaphor. In all of his creations he shows to us a chronicle that has been created with great detail, extreme care and enormous delicateness.

Guerrero builds an intuitive world, parallel to the real and tangible one, where that which we could perceive as reality fades and mixes with another, more abstract world; as if his works had been created through simultaneous journeys, some to his inner side in an intuitive way, and others in real journeys looking at each fragment of our surroundings.

His painting is demanding of the spectator, forcing us to think about and question the complex pattern underlying in his proposals.

Rubén Guerrero’s works are invitations to explore the infinite possibilities of painting, revealing what is hidden through the recreations of a world where figuration as well as abstraction coexist under the same conditions. His paintings are often difficult to categorise; they evoke structures that we might previously have seen, but which appear to us narrated in a new way, being tales in which the artist explores the reality we know in an unexpected way. He invites us to share his interest in the narration of a fragment, and shows us the way we conceive history and what is around us, thus communicating a feeling of dynamic motion to us in what he creates.

Guerrero’s pictorial space is at the same time palpably physical as well as deeply psychological; it comes from an observation rooted in personal experience. His work provides us with a natural and complex gaze at the microscopic world as well as at the macroscopic world, which allows us to share the presence of known scenes.

María de Corral
Lorena Martínez de Corral

Artwork

In order to talk about the painting of Rubén Guerrero (Seville, 1979) it is necessary to spend time considering the painting itself, in its material flesh, in its very substance.This was how the critic Juan Bosco Díaz Urmeneta saw it: “As one can see, this painting crossed through by thought possesses a remarkable formal solidness. Guerrero uses oil and enamel, and thus manages to achieve dense, shiny surfaces that completely hide the pattern of the canvas, but which grant the surface of the painting a strange consistency. This material quality of the painting creates a distancing in the spectator, who can hardly make out the support nor trace the painter’s gesture.Yet this distancing perfectly connects with the author’s intention: it is the very content of the painting that sets up the artifice that, as a consequence, is not shown in its materiality but simply in the idea that presides over its making”.

A magnificent example of this can be seen in S.T. (Untitled), 2015, in which the solidified intensity of the thick yellow background is cut out, allowing one to see another surface below it, another existence to which the painting, no matter how beautiful it may be, refuses us access.

Guerrero fits into a very powerful group of Sevillian artists or resident in Seville who emerged at the end of the nineties and to which belong, among others, Miki Leal, José Manuel Pereñiguez and Matías Sánchez, who have made reflection on the practice of painting the fundamental axis of their work.This philosophical meditation appears in many of Guerrero’s titles, such as Mapping the studio, El marco (The Frame), Thinking of painting or the here exhibited S/T (Untitled) (Ideé de peinture MB), 2014, in which we can see the dividing up of the two canvases of the diptych into what I would dare qualify as perverse geometry, that as much constructs a perfect image as it confuses the spectator in a game of false compositions. It contrasts a left side that is narrow, luminous and with warm colours with the disordered layout and generous, almost blackish surfaces on its right side.

I would also highlight the extraordinary diversity of his work in formats and in contents, indifferent to the figuration-abstraction debate, the use of all kinds of auxiliary material, his drawing power and the ease of his brush-stroke, which, as we have pointed out, allows him to approach large surfaces, and, finally, the power of the colours.

Mariano Navarro
Madrid, 2015

CV

1976, Utrera, Sevilla, España. Vive y trabaja en Sevilla – Vive e lavora a Sevilla – Lives and works in Sevilla

FORMACIÓN / FORMACIÓ / FORMAZIONE / EDUCATION

1999 Licenciado en la Facultad de Bellas Artes Isabel de Hungría de Sevilla en la especialidad de Pintura.


EXPOSICIONES INDIVIDUALES / EXPOSICIONS INDIVIDUALS / MOSTRE INDIVIDUALI / SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2014 Nivel cero. Luis Adelantado. Valencia

2013 Entre fraudes y hechos. Luis Adelantado. México D. F.

2010 Toma alternativa. Galería Rafael Ortiz. Sevilla

2009 Canvas is the place. Gale- ría Luis Adelantado. Valencia

2007 Anverso [contra] reverso. Centro de las Artes de Sevilla C.A.S. Monasterio San Clemente. Sevilla

2006 Caja de Instrucciones. Luis Adelantado. Valencia

EXPOSICIONES COLECTIVAS, BECAS Y PREMIOS / EXPOSICIONS COL·LECTIVES, BEQUES I PREMIS / MOSTRE COLLETTIVE, BORSE DI STUDIO E PREMI / GROUP EXHIBITIONS, AWARDS, CURATORIAL PROJECTS

(selección /selecció / selezione / selection)

2015 Veo/Geo. Centro de las Artes de Sevilla, CAS. Sevilla

ZonaMaco. Luis Adelantado. México D. F.

ArcoMadrid. Luis Adelantado. Madrid

2014 PARÁFRASIS. La recepción de El Greco en el neobarroco actual. Museo de Albacete. Albacete

12.a Biennal Martínez Guerricabeitia. Sala Academia del Centro Cultural La Nau de la Universitat de València. Valencia

ZonaMaco. Luis Adelantado. México D. F.

ArcoMadrid. Luis Adelantado. Madrid

Itinerarios de una colección. Co- lecciones del DA2 y Fundación Coca-Cola. Comisariada por Lorena Martínez del Corral en La Nau. Valencia

Summa. Solo projects.

Comisariado por Marina Fokidis. Luis Adelantado. Madrid

2013 Itinerarios de una colección. Colecciones del DA2 y Fundación Coca-Cola. Comisariada por L. Martínez del Corral en la sala del Casino de la Exposición en Sevilla

Última pintura en las colecciones del DA2 y Fundación Coca-Cola. Comisariada por L. Martínez del Corral, itinerante en el Palacio Sa- lazar de Santa Cruz, La Palma. Centro de Arte Juan Ismael de Fuerteventura y MIAC de Lanzarote

ZonaMaco. Luis Adelantado. México D. F.

ArcoMadrid. Luis Adelantado. Madrid

2012 Distopías desencajadas. Centro de exposiciones de Benalmádena. Málaga

Última pintura, en las colecciones de la Fundación Coca-Cola y DA2 Salamanca. Centro de Arte de La Regenta. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

ZonaMaco. Luis Adelantado. México D. F.

ArcoMadrid. Luis Adelantado. Madrid

2011 3 under 40. Galería Marlborough. Barcelona

Distopías desencajadas. Santa Inés, nuevo espacio Iniciarte. Sevilla

El Ojo del mirlo. Galería Isabel Urley. Málaga

El cadáver exquisito. Museo de Alcalá de Guadaíra. Sevilla

Exposición colectiva con las nuevas adquisiciones de la Fundación Coca-Cola. Comisariada por Lorena Martínez del Corral en DA2 de Salamanca

ZonaMaco. Luis Adelantado. México D. F.

ArcoMadrid. Luis Adelantado. Madrid

S/t, técnica mixta, medidas variables. proyecto dirigido por Jaime de la Jara, Jacobo Castellano y Miki Leal. Madrid

2010 Ozú qué caló. Comisariada por Jesús Reina. Galería Fúcares. Almagro

Pintando versos, homenaje a Miguel Hernández, en el Casino de la Exposición. Sevilla

Premio Lissone 2010. Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lissone, Italia

La imagen y el animal.

Comisariada por F. Javier Sánchez. Palacio de los Condes de Gabia. Granada

El Hombre sin Alternativa

(Conceptos de destrucción y conservación del entorno y la realidad en el arte contemporáneo andaluz). Comisariada por Iván de laTorre Amerighi y Juan Ramón Rodríguez. España.

ZonaMaco. Luis Adelantado. México D. F.

Nuevos pintores figurativos en colecciones públicas de la provincia de Sevilla. Museo de Alcalá de Guadaíra. Sevilla

2009 Circa. Luis Adelantado. Puerto Rico.

ZonaMaco. Luis Adelantado. México D. F.

ArcoMadrid. Luis Adelantado. Madrid

El pensamiento en la boca. Sala Chicarreros de Cajasol. Sevilla

ArteFiera. Luis Adelantado

2008 Inicial 08. Comisariada por Óscar Alonso Molina. Espacio Iniciarte. Sevilla

SH Comtenporary 08. The Asian Pacific Contemporary Art Fair. Shanghái

Reacción en cadena, colectiva en la Galería Rafael Ortiz. Sevilla

Los claveles. Una aproximación a los jóvenes artistas de Sevilla. Fundación Chirivella Soriano. Valencia

ZonaMaco. Luis Adelantado. México D. F.

ArcoMadrid. Luis Adelantado. Madrid

RomaContemporary. Luis Adelantado. Roma

4 en la Neilson Gallery.

Grazalema. Cádiz

Ajenos. Comisariada por Raffaella Guidobono. Cavallerizza di Palazzo Sambuca. Palermo

2007 Vice. Luis Adelantado. Miami

El pensamiento en la boca.

Cajasol. Jerez. Cádiz

XLIII Certamen de artes plásticas Caja San Fernando. Casa Pemán, Plaza San Antonio. Cádiz

Trasantlántica. Proyecto comisariado por A. D. Resurrección para la galería 713 Arte Contemporáneo. Buenos Aires

ZonaMaco. Luis Adelantado. México D. F.

SpArte. Luis Adelantado. Brasil. Trasantlántica. Proyecto

comisariado por A. D.

ArcoMadrid. Luis Adelantado. Madrid

2006 XLIII Certamen de artes plásticas Caja San Fernando. Sala Caja San Fernando, Plaza San Francisco. Sevilla

The sock strategy. Comisariada por Iván de laTorre Amerighi. Sala Villasis. Fundación el Monte. Sevilla

Muestra andaluza de arte joven.

Colección del Instituto Andaluz de la Juventud, Sala Amadís. Madrid

 



Artwork in Exhibition