09.07.24 –
31.08.24
Mar del Norte
Exhibition showroom↗
Mar del Norte is Carlos García-Álix's first solo exhibition at the Centro de Arte Faro Cabo Mayor in Santander. Overlooking the sea, the exhibition presents a selection of oil paintings made in recent years (2021 - 2024). All of them are based on the memory of the same place, the Ise Fjord, Copenhagen. For years, García-Álix has lived with this fjord inside him; he has returned to it from the journey, from memory and from the paintbrush.
The shore is a boundary between two states. An edge between the known and the inexplicable. A border between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Almost all the work presented in this exhibition is born of a return to the shore, to this shore. In each painting García-Álix presents a modified image of this place, moulds it in a new light, bathes it in a different emotion. With each brushstroke he transforms this edge, captures and invents nuances and details. It seems that his painting is always arriving at the edge, seeking an encounter with the limit. But it is a limit that does not close but opens, a space of infinite potential.
In several of his books, the philosopher Didi-Huberman investigates how images and works of art can act as bearers of memory, how they are able to establish a dialogue between the visible and the invisible, between the remembered and the forgotten. For him, images are not simply static representations, but are imbued with a special temporality and vividness. In the case of Carlos García-Alix, the reiteration of this landscape is also an exercise in visual memory. By painting the same fjord over and over again, García-Alix not only shows us this North Sea, but explores, above all, how this place lives in his memory. Each painting can be seen as a variation, a new interpretation, and a new manifestation of his memories and emotions. An investigation of how a memory lives in and with his mind.
Somehow, painting has this ability to oscillate between memory and oblivion, it can act as a threshold, it can be crossed. Mar del Norte is the evocation of a memory, but also its transformation and constant reconfiguration. An excuse, a place that acquires new layers of meaning and emotion with each iteration, showing that memory is not linear; it is in constant transformation.
García-Alix returns a thousand times to that North Sea to explore, from there, this limit between the remembered and the forgotten. To return to search for the end, the many possible endings. This exhibition is also a tribute to return, a celebration of painting as a device for return and invention.
Mar del Norte is Carlos García-Álix's first solo exhibition at the Centro de Arte Faro Cabo Mayor in Santander. Overlooking the sea, the exhibition presents a selection of oil paintings made in recent years (2021 - 2024). All of them are based on the memory of the same place, the Ise Fjord, Copenhagen. For years, García-Álix has lived with this fjord inside him; he has returned to it from the journey, from memory and from the paintbrush.
The shore is a boundary between two states. An edge between the known and the inexplicable. A border between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Almost all the work presented in this exhibition is born of a return to the shore, to this shore. In each painting García-Álix presents a modified image of this place, moulds it in a new light, bathes it in a different emotion. With each brushstroke he transforms this edge, captures and invents nuances and details. It seems that his painting is always arriving at the edge, seeking an encounter with the limit. But it is a limit that does not close but opens, a space of infinite potential.
In several of his books, the philosopher Didi-Huberman investigates how images and works of art can act as bearers of memory, how they are able to establish a dialogue between the visible and the invisible, between the remembered and the forgotten. For him, images are not simply static representations, but are imbued with a special temporality and vividness. In the case of Carlos García-Alix, the reiteration of this landscape is also an exercise in visual memory. By painting the same fjord over and over again, García-Alix not only shows us this North Sea, but explores, above all, how this place lives in his memory. Each painting can be seen as a variation, a new interpretation, and a new manifestation of his memories and emotions. An investigation of how a memory lives in and with his mind.
Somehow, painting has this ability to oscillate between memory and oblivion, it can act as a threshold, it can be crossed. Mar del Norte is the evocation of a memory, but also its transformation and constant reconfiguration. An excuse, a place that acquires new layers of meaning and emotion with each iteration, showing that memory is not linear; it is in constant transformation.
García-Alix returns a thousand times to that North Sea to explore, from there, this limit between the remembered and the forgotten. To return to search for the end, the many possible endings. This exhibition is also a tribute to return, a celebration of painting as a device for return and invention.
Carlos García-Alix
In his particular artistic approach, he immerses reality in the gloom of the night, creating paintings that materialise in just 15 minutes. His works are annotations of the night, capturing the essence of entering or leaving this mysterious period. García-Alix succeeds in capturing specific moments and states, especially at dusk, turning the night into a tangible material. His approach is formal and traditional, rooted in obvious observation, emphasising the need to be quick in his expression, reflecting the transience of the night and visually capturing the sensation of a blue sky in darkness.