Opening at i8 Gallery Reykjav�k, Friday, 22 October, 5-7 PM
i8 Gallery takes great pleasure in announcing its first solo exhibition of artist Ignacio Uriarte.
Ignacio Uriarte quit his career in business administration to work as a full-time artist. Seeing the possibilities afforded to him by his experience in the cubicle, however, he never left the office. Using the same tools and methods of any office employee, Uriarte continues to work in a routine way with routine as his major focus. Starting with the smallest creative office gestures such as scribbling during a phone conversation or ripping a sheet of paper from a pad, Uriarte's systematic repetition of these absurdly small artistic moments according to predefined rules, transforms them into meta-routines -- the detail of this Sisyphean labour recorded with Bic pens, A4 sheets, Microsoft Excel, photocopiers, and writing pads.
Drawing from a history of conceptual practices from the 60s and 70s, artists like Sol LeWitt, Hanne Darboven, and Robert Ryman are filtered through the ball of a Bic pen as the behavioral aesthetics of office tedium are converted into vertiginous monochromes, color studies, and haptic doodles. Uriarte achieves a delicate balance between analog and digital, which becomes a painfully present lexicon analyzing how the machine is capable of replicating something human -- such as an error -- and the human something mechanical like a perfect form.
For further information please contact Iris Stefansdottir at i8 Gallery on +354 551 3666 or [email protected]
