‘Eons,’ ‘Empty Journeys,’ and pictorial ouroboros: this is Iñigo Manterola’s mind
‘Eons,’ ‘Empty Journeys,’ and pictorial ouroboros: this is Iñigo Manterola’s mind
Eon. That is the word chosen by Iñigo Manterola to title his latest series of sculptures: and we can’t think of a more accurate concept than that to define and synthesize the work signed by the artist, the result of years of study and experimentation. In the same way that the word ‘eon’ represents, in just three letters, an indefinite period of time of a long duration, Manterola manages to capture –through his sculptures– the movement elapsed in an indefinite period of time.
To catch movement and give it visibility has been his obsession throughout his career, ever since he made the leap from figuration to abstraction. His first figurative paintings portrayed the daily lives of fishermen, and he gradually added lines of organic shapes around the sailors, to represent the characters’ kinetics. Little by little, the sailors lost their relevance, until movement finally prevailed in the form of lines on the pale canvas.
His next step was to draw those brushstrokes in space, turning them into sculptures. These pieces, made of weathering steel, brass, rope, resin, and stainless steel, are born on the ground and, after infringing upon space with oscillating shapes, they once again die on the ground. While the sculptures of his first series, ‘Paseos por el soporte’ (‘Journeys Through the Medium’) are completely solid, those of his second series, ‘Paseos vacíos’ (‘Empty Journeys’), are hollow, made with tubes. With ‘Eon,’ his aim is to show the inner emptiness of these last pieces, violently dissecting their bodies, resulting in extraordinary unipedal, bipedal, and tripedal sculptures.
Simultaneously, Manterola continues to try to imprison movement by working abstraction on canvas. This series of oil paintings, entitled ‘Tránsitos’ (‘Transits’), has recently reached a new level, moving away for the first time from (earthly) edges, creating a continuous line: a true pictorial ouroboros. The object of the study of this reinterpretation of infinity leads us to want to know what is happening inside the line, as is the case with the ‘Eon’ sculptures.
Manterola’s reflections have been enthusiastically received around the world: he has just installed three unipedal sculptures measuring over four meters tall in the yard of a private collector from the USA, he is planning the creation of a second large-scale piece for the University of Hamburg (in 2018 they installed the first one), and this year he opens an exhibition featuring 15 medium- and large-scale pieces at El Palace Barcelona, the luxury hotel founded by César Ritz.
Although his abstract works are the ones that have popularized him the most in recent years, Manterola has not neglected figuration and continues to paint the sea, allowing himself to be surprised by everything that the ocean brings to the coast. His latest discovery has been the foam created by the waves breaking against the beach, another ephemeral motif that will surely haunt him for an eon.
Iñigo Manterola
Ola Bidea s/n, Polígono Errotaberri, Zarautz.
Tel.: +34 617 332 813
