ESTIARE IN ARCO 08
Stand 12 B18
Artists in ARCO 08: José Ramón Amondarain, Miguel Aguirre, José Manuel Ballester, Lidia Benavides, Jan Dibbets, Zhu Ming, Eduardo Nave and Darío Urzay

Estiarte presents in Arco 08 the latest work from José Ramón Amondarain with painting and photography, new relations between painting and video from Darío Urzay, as well as the latest photographs from José Manuel Ballester, a large piece from Lidia Benavides' latest project and the most recent photos from Eduardo Nave, plus recent works from the European master of conceptual art Jan Dibbets.

José Ramón Amondarain PAINTING AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Estiarte presents the latest paintings and photographs from José Ramón Amondarain (San Sebastián, 1964), one of the Spanish artists who in the last ten years has best contributed to the creation of a painting updated via reflection on the image and technology. His works have always dealt with painting: with the representation of painting, with the form and matter of painting, with photography transformed by painting, with painting executed with industrial method on canvas. In this new series of photographs titled Nudes, Amondarain works on the well-known series of pornographic photographs by Tomas Ruff, reproducing them in painting and then editing the final work in photography with digital tools. In this way the artist establishes the dissolution and confusion of frontiers between techniques and procedures with a result that is as attractive as it is enigmatic, which opens up a wide field of reflection for the viewer.

José Manuel Ballester PHOTOGRAPHY
Again and as usual, José Manuel Ballester (Madrid, 1960) is on the Estiarte stand in Arco in order to present new photographs. First of all a large photograph produced on canvas marks out for us the structure of one of the new towers under construction in the Paseo de Castellana, Madrid: the framing and its formal analysis, the contrast with the night sky and its huge scale generate an enveloping and majestic presence. And accompanying this piece, Ballester offers us Vistas de Hong Kong 2, a delicious composition firmly structured and balanced, a photograph of large dimensions which uses the Hong Kong skyline to paint its subtle ochres and sweet humid creams creating a very beautiful urban order. In both, the artist shows us scenes compositionally, atmospherically and chromatically subjected to that process of cooling of reality, of minimalist dispossession, an essential trait of that particular poetics of desolate distant resonances which characterises his work.

Lidia Benavides VIDEO-STILLS INSTALLATION
Following its presence in PhotoMiami The Sun Oven 52 comes to ARCO. This is a large photographic mural produced from 52 video stills forming part of the latest project from Lidia Benavides (Madrid, 1971), produced in 2007 in the Solar Platform of Almería and which we presented in the gallery in January. Lidia Benavides has been developing a general project of plastic investigation with light on various different media and processes which have led her to working through photography and video since 1995 in order to produce a highly personal language within photographic abstraction.

Miguel Aguirre PAINTING
The method of Miguel Aguirre, (Lima, 1973) is founded on the analysis of certain audiovisual icons and events coming from the cinema and audiovisual diffusion, which, via a traditional technical process as is oil painting, restate certain principles to do with the theory of communication, the sociology of reading, the aesthetics of the reception of audiovisual information and the rhetoric of the mass-media. Two series with the titles Dramatization and DD/MM update the tradition of historical painting and the chronicling of events. Estiarte presents Miguel Aguirre in ARCO with a painting on a large-format canvas produced via a disturbing and frightening image captured from reality by a video-surveillance camera. He is taking his Doctorate in Fine Arts from Barcelona University and has held important exhibitions in museums and institutions in Lima as well as winning major prizes for painting in Peru.

Jan Dibbets PHOTOGRAPHY
The series Perspective Collections presents a revisitation of the original concept developed by Jan Dibbets (Weert, Holland, 1941) in the sixties, though now with an additional element of composition. In each work the corrector trapezoid drawn by Dibbets interacts with works by colleagues of his generation: Sol Lewitt, Carl Andre, Robert Ryman, Robert Mangold or Donal Judd. What Dibbets proposes with his intervention is that our look should go beyond what is shown by the mere photographic image and lead us towards less visible zones of space.

Zhu Ming LIGHT-BOXES
The performances of Zhu Ming (Changsha, Hunan, China, 1972) explores concepts such as protection, vulnerability and interdependence referring to the construction of personal identity. These works imply subjecting his own body to a limit state as in the series produced in Sydney harbour inside a plastic ball, or in the works which we present on the stand, in which the artist is smeared with a fluorescent liquid in order to illuminate and photograph himself. The use of ink, so intimately tied to Chinese education and discipline through writing, is another of his resources and stylemes.

Eduardo Nave PHOTOGRAPHY
Trained in photography studies, in 1998 Eduardo Nave (Valencia, 1977) started to produce photo-reportages of handicapped and marginalised social groups, with a tone and intent of powerful commitment. Series such as Paisajes intermedios (2000-2005) and Campos de Arroz (2004-2005) led him into experimenting with the landscape genre from experimentation with rolls of film and an extreme subjectivity leading to abstraction. Various study grants took him to working in several different cities from which he brought back Matrix-Manía (2003), a study of Paris through advertising, and Normandie: Les Rivages du dèbarquement (2003-2005), showing the beaches and landing areas of D-Day. Estiarte presents his latest work produced in the rooms of the old Slaughterhouse of Madrid.

Darío Urzay PAINTING AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Darío Urzay (Bilbao, 1958) brings to the Estiarte Stand his latest paintings and photographs revealing his particular reflections surrounding the relation between reality and fiction, by means of hybridising techniques and processes, concepts related to multiplicity, authenticity and simulacrum of the work of art and its creative reverses. At all times from the technical and conceptual rigour which marks this unavoidable protagonist of contemporary plastic art. This time with his latest plastic discoveries relating painting and video, technological and manual image.