hurrengoa
gestures and time. "The infinite is contained in a sheet of paper" blanca oria   Can we change the meaning of the sometimes imperceivable everyday objects and things that surround us? Can we remake them? Can we turn them round or remove them from their context? Can we recycle/store/take apart these objects that have been marked by the passing of time? They too have left their marks such as the small rut in a piece of wood or ink blotches left on the aluminium plates used to print something. Angel Arbe discovered the pleasures cutting and pasting long before computers made them a set phrase. He found a prolongation of himself and an easy-to-use, clean, accurate and silent tool in a simple pair of scissors. You barely needed more a small corner, a table and a chair to turn any part ot the house into an artist's studio. Printed paper is an easily found common good and scissors are a simple, obtainable tool that are always ready to be used. Arbe has brought both elements together and with a bit of cutting and pasting has come up with "Estrategia", his latest exposition. "Estrategias" is journey through the different suggestions hidden in a pocket, the collar of a shirt, lace from lingerie, a tie, a sleeve, in these small swathes of material that cover us and take our shapes with all our folds, ruffles and gestures.
At times the fabrics fold back on themselves, other times they balance each other and you can barely note a lapel brushing against a shirt collar. Each object, however, revindicates its own personality. What dresses us represents us, our movements, our way of bending and how we carry ourselves through the space surrounding us. Behind that piece of check cloth there is an individual, a behaviour, a being in all senses of the word; you can feel the silent, precise scissors and the prolongation of an artist's gaze.
Everything: remenants, individual and artist come together and pose on time clocks in the shape of pieces of wood in whose concentric circles we can read the day or the year or on inked metal badges that have been used time and time again to print paper. In this way man, time, the immediate gesture and what has been lived are superimposed, added together and they finally end up as photographs or singular and personal collages.
"Estrategias" has been born to move. The exposition got underway in Tolosa, at The Aranburu Palace, and can be visited at the Pabellon de Mixtos, Ciudadela, Irunea from the 12th of April to the 12th of May. December finds it at the Museo Gustavo de Maeztu de Estella. Angel Arbe stakes his claim that the minimum expresses everything and opens his catalogue with "the infinite is contained in a sheet of paper". A statement with as sutble and precise intentions as those contained in his work.