Iñaki Gracenea , Hondarribia (Guipuzcoa) 1972, is showing his latest work, Rambling Space, in Espacio Distrito Cu4tro.
This is an installation, the final part of Package Room, which was his project immediately before this. In his words, “it refers to a temporarily constructed space which takes up part of the gallery”.
With Rambling Space, Package Room is now moving into a new interior, taking this change on as part of the work itself. From such a perspective two options present themselves: to remake and move the work to its new location or to take the work apart and put it together taking into account the new exhibition space. Gracenea is interested in this modular aspect of the work, in placing it in different spaces, an intangible architecture which can be constructed but which is not permanent, which does not want to possess a space but only to inhabit one. Rambling Space creates a new situation.
“I think it is important that the piece can mutate, that it can adapt to the primary idea of Wachsmann and Gropius, the architect creators of Package House System, where the design and assembly were simplified to achieve a stage set which could be enlarged in modular fashion and go on expanding naturally, in an organic way. This organic aspect of the project interests me, where the space imposes an arbitrary boundary and the work must adjust to new situations.”
The exhibition opens with a series of paintings which tell the story of the project. For Gracenea painting functions as “instructions for use”: it is about the developing, practising, processing of the project, the bringing about of the whole event. The artist says that the critical space from where he develops his painting is linked to redefined abstraction and very far from lyrical creativity, self-satisfied ornamentalism, or neogeometric mannerism. Emulating the Windows monitor, in his imagery cybernetics is implied not just as something subsumed in “representation” but as a general atmosphere in which to construct his crafted inventions. In an environment which Gracenea describes as the devouring struggle of the images, painting must try to revitalise, without it implying a fetishisation of the chosen medium.
Since 1993, the work of Iñaki Gracenea has been regularly on exhibition. At the same time he has received awards: From the Fundacion Botin (2001) and prizes: First in the Carsa prize for Art and Technology (Bilbao 2002), first prize in the New Artists competition in Guipuzcoa(2003). His work is in the following collections: Diputacion Foral in Guipuzcoa, Fundacion Botin, Caja Madrid o Artium, Vitoria Contemporary art museum.
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