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11.2017
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PLASTIC MURS 

“A partir de estas tres cosas, luz, sombra y color,

nosotros construimos el mundo visible,

y son ellas, al mismo tiempo,

las que hacen posible la existencia de la Pintura,

un arte que tiene el poder de producir sobre una superficie plana

un mundo mucho más perfectamente visible que el real.”

           Teoría de los colores, Goethe

Los fotógrafos del siglo XIX, algunos ex pintores, buscaron asimilar la fotografía con la pintura obedeciendo a ciertos artificios compositivos y a una mera transposición formal. Fueron la corriente pictorialista de los inicios de la fotografía.

Otros artistas elaboraron, ya en el siglo XX, bajo el influjo del surrealismo o la Bauhaus, imágenes radicales y espelunantes como las rayografías de Man Ray o los fotomontajes de Heartfield.

El tiempo se ha encargado de borrar la anécdota nimia y convertirla en emoción universal. El tiempo transfigura en conmovedor o patético el registro fotográfico cotidiano: “Esto ha sido”, que escribió Barthes, y aquí lo presentamos.

Sin embargo, representar con pintura la vida y su devenir es el lugar común de la coherente selección de Vicente Torres en Plastic Murs. Expone pintura construida desde una visión fotográfica, incluso cinematográfica, con sensibilidad urbana, e intuimos, deseo de trascender lo efímero.

Iñigo Sesma, preocupado por su contexto social e histórico, aprehende la realidad (clave de toda poética) con las imágenes visuales que consume: fotografías digitales y analógicas, películas de cine y sus fotogramas, televisión, Internet... luego reconstruye plásticamente lo digerido. El resultado es Pintura, destreza y pensamiento.

The photographers of the 19th century, some former painters, sought to assimilate the picture with painting obeying certain compositional artifice and mere formal transposition. They were the pictorialism movement from the beginnings of photography.

Time has been responsible for deleting the nimia story and turn it into universal emotion. Time transfigured into petty or pathetic, the daily photographic record. “This has been”, wrote Barthes, and we present it here.

However, depict life with painting and its evolution is the common place of the coherent selection of the exhibition. Shows painting built from a photographic view, even cinematic, with urban sensitivity, and the desire to transcend the ephemeral.

Iñigo Sesma, concerned about his social and historical context, apprehends reality (key to all poetry) with the visual images that consumes: analog and digital photographs, movies, cinema and its frames, television, Internet... then reconstructs plastically the digested. The result is paint, skill and thinking.

Juan Canales

Universitat Politécnica de Valencia. 

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10. 2019

Painting and Neolithic

SC GALLERY

This exhibition is rather secondly, a friendly reunion.

First, it would be a meeting, in which, in each of those, the bizarre wish to prioritise some of the plastic aspects on a painting is being leveraged. They believe that that is where nests the core of the matter, so much so, that terms like creation or even friendship, actually make sense.

This small horde of painters answer to the names of; Gabriel Coca, Mikel del Rio, Amaya Suberviola, Sebas Velasco and Iñigo Sesma. They identify themselves as part of the acronym M9, one of the modules of the Master in painting, at the Faculty of BB.AA of Leioa, where, already four years ago, they engaged in pictorial work through an intense life experience.

There, they learned, amongst other things, that in this painting technique, the act of painting for something or for nothing don’t decidedly differ. Hence their wondering if this “in order for” is that important , when it comes  down to keeping on painting.

For the M9, questioning the theme itself is important. However, they ultimately paint buildings, cars, landscapes, plastic bags, characters, high tech still-life or chromatically exacerbated orthogonal thresholds, while always being able to make the necessary effort not to convert the painting into a chromium. And if it is indeed a chromium, it would have to be only for the sake of structural work, which would make the theme of the painting exactly that; a chromium.

Innovative authors are said not to give much importance to memory in their paintings. Maybe what one doesn’t want to acknowledge is the adequacy of their vision relative to a certain technical versatility, incorporating with it new plastic paths to reach the image. The abstraction and the observation of the latter through the computer screen for example, supports this process.

What lies in painting a screen is that every little thing implies an inflation of the outlook, subtracting other sensorial vectors from the action and conceding everything, or almost everything, to the axis thought-eye. Hegel would love that.

Nevertheless, as someone already said, despite the fact that the memory content is a function of the speed of oblivion, the M9 hybridise their performance under constant alertness, thus calibrating in their paintings anything that could suggest a stupor of their surroundings.

What the M9 have in common is that they don’t create through indexing. Hence, their concrete painting issue unfolds, without excessive concern, like a version of something that commemorates the already seen.

Now, it is from that standpoint (that one could consider as being a kind of exit priming), that one starts to feel this tipping point in which, as Valéry said, the supreme imperative is not to make what has already been made. Accordingly, they opt for friendship between the parties to be based upon the trust in correctness, even with the risk of their own destruction.

There is a certain mystery around this group of people that gets together and wants to keep on painting. In light of the desert of options and the actual apathy around anything pictorial, the whole thing takes on overtones of a bet that resists the diaspora and which, in spite of everything, aspires to reach a balanced situation. Matter of trust.

In the face of this, they, like other groups of young artists, bravely gather in studios and premises around the city outskirts.

Perhaps, like what is usually said of small neolithic communities, and despite a certain technical precariousness, they are indeed building the most fitting way of living, without excluding happiness from their environment for all that.

 

Luis Candaudap. September 2019

La pintura y el neolítico

 

Esta exposición es, en segundo lugar, una reunión de amigos.

 

En primer lugar, sería un encuentro, de lo que en cada uno de estos potencia la extraña voluntad de priorizar algunos aspectos plásticos sobre un cuadro. Ellos creen que ahí anida algo importante, capaz de que términos como creación, o incluso amistad, tengan sentido.

Esta pequeña horda de pintores responden a los nombres de; Gabriel Coca, Mikel del Rio, Amaya Suberviola, Sebas Velasco e Iñigo Sesma. Se reconocen bajo las siglas de M9, uno de los módulos del máster de pintura de la facultad de BB.AA de Leioa, donde, hace ya 4 años, se implicaron en el trabajo pictórico a través de una intensa experiencia vivencial.

Allí aprendieron, entre otras cosas, que en este medio de la pintura el hecho de pintar para algo, o de pintar para nada, no se diferencia claramente. Esto hace que se pregunten si ese “para” es tan importante a la hora de seguir pintando.

Para los M9 la pregunta sobre el tema es importante. No obstante, y a fin de cuentas, pinten edificios, autos, paisajes, bolsas de plástico, personajes, bodegones high-tec o umbrales ortogonales de exacerbada croma, son capaces de hacer el esfuerzo necesario para que el cuadro no sea un cromo. Y si lo es, que lo sea sólo por un trabajo estructural, que hace que el tema del cuadro sea precisamente ese; ser un cromo.

 

Se ha comentado de los autores noveles, que a la hora de pintar no dan mucha importancia a la memoria. Tal vez lo que no se ha querido ver, es la adecuación de la rapidez de su ojo en relación a cierta versatilidad con los medios, incorporando con ello nuevas maneras plásticas de acceder a la imagen. La captación y observación de esta, a través de la pantalla del ordenador por ejemplo, es algo que responde a ello.

Lo que tiene el pintar de pantalla es que todo supone una inflación de la mirada, restando otros vectores sensoriales a la acción, y cediendo todo, o casi todo, al eje pensamiento-ojo. A Hegel le gustaría.

Aún así, y como ha dicho alguien, pese al hecho de que el contenido de la memoria sea una función de la velocidad del olvido, los M9 hibridan su hacer bajo una alerta constante, calibrando en sus cuadros todo lo que suponga una amnesia de lo que les rodea.

 

Lo que los M9 tienen en común es que no creen en catalogaciones. Por eso, su problema concreto en pintura se despliega, sin preocupaciones excesivas, como una versión de algo que recuerda a cosas ya vistas. Pero es desde esa posición (que podrían considerar como una especie de imprimación de salida), desde donde empiezan a sentir ese punto crítico, en el que, como decía Válery, el imperativo supremo es no hacer lo que ya ha sido hecho. Para ello apuestan por que la “amistad” entre las partes se base en la confianza de la corrección, aún a riesgo del aniquilamiento de estas.

 

Es misterioso este grupo de gente que se reúne deseando seguir pintando. Ante el desierto de opciones, y el desinterés actual por lo pictórico, la cosa toma visos de una apuesta que resiste a la diáspora, y que pese a todo aspira a un estado equilibrado de la situación; cuestión de fe.

Ante esto, ellos, como otros grupos de jóvenes artistas, se reúnen valientemente en estudios y locales por los alrededores de la urbe.

Tal vez, como dicen de esas pequeñas comunidades neolíticas, y pese a cierta precariedad de medios, estén forjando la manera más justa de vivir, sin excluir por ello a la felicidad de su ámbito.

 

 

Luis Candaudap. Septiembre de 2019

04. 2023

/ ́DRAIV INN/                                                                                   

Solo Show - PDP Gallery

París, 2023

¨43 days, 14 states, and over 4500 miles of road trip across the United States shape the visual narrative of / ́DRAIV INN/. In the face of the eternity of a landscape defined by the straightness of its roads, Iñigo Sesma turns his instinct into the compass of the journey.

 

There is something enigmatic and enchanting about embarking on a journey down the road. It's a feeling of venturing into the unknown, where the destination is just a footnote compared to the vastness of the journey. Time becomes a trusted companion, and days merge into each other seamlessly as we traverse between motels and gas stations. It's in these moments of unpredictability that unexpected encounters and extraordinary stories arise, etching themselves into our memories.

 

Travelling through the United States, the emptiness of certain states spreads like a disease, but life manages to emerge in the most surprising ways. Nature weaves its patterns into the fabric of the land, while clichés abound for those who have never treaded these paths. Amidst abandoned places, faith, and flags, we find ourselves as nomads, adapting to an unfamiliar environment, and left alone with our thoughts. It's here that our minds venture beyond the car window, fantasizing about the lives of others and weaving them into our own.

 

Like any initiatory path, it arose from a turning point, from a search for the deeper reality that lies hidden in our travels. /‘ Draiv Inn/ was born out of this same desire to capture the essence of the places and situations where life seems to escape through the back door.

 

Iñigo Sesma sets his gaze on everything that exudes the inherent reality of someone who knows that something had "better times", imbuing his brushes with the furtive gaze of someone who has been spying and has taken an object from the crime scene.

 

From frozen fragments and imagined realities, Iñigo Sesma protects that last vestige of vitality in each work, portraying the struggle to survive the twilight in the eternity of the canvas.¨

 

 

Victoria Rivers

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/ ́DRAIV INN/

Solo Show - PDP Gallery

París, 2023

 

¨43 días, 14 estados y más de 4500 millas de road trip por Estados Unidos dan forma a la narrativa visual de / ́DRAIV INN/ en donde ante la eternidad de un paisaje porla rectitud de sus carreteras, Iñigo Sesma convierte a su instinto en la brújula del viaje.

Existe algo extraño y mágico, al mismo tiempo, en “aquel” que comienza un viaje por carretera.

El destino se convierte en algo anecdótico ante la inmensidad del recorrido, las infinitas distancias toman un nuevo significado y el tiempo se convierte en un compañero más del viaje. Los días se suceden uno tras otro sin pena ni gloria entre moteles y gasolineras. “La gloria” aparece de forma inesperada con momentos extraños e historias extraordinarias para quedarse siempre en nuestra memoria.

En Estados Unidos la nada se expande casi como una plaga a lo largo de los estados, la vida aparece de forma sorpresiva en ocasiones y la naturaleza va creando la pauta del territorio. Los clichés aparecen de tres en tres para aquel que nunca ha recorrido estas tierras, entre lugares abandonados, fe y banderas.

Desde la falsa pasividad del que está sentado en perpetuo movimiento, nuestra mente viaja más allá de lo que podemos ver a través de la ventanilla del coche; nómadas en perpetua adaptación ante un entorno desconocido y solos con nuestros pensamientos, fantaseamos con todo aquello que observamos. Pensamos la vida ajena y nos vemos formando parte de ella desde la atalaya del que está de paso, robamos esa realidad imaginada y la dejamos capturada en nuestro recuerdo.

/ ́DRAIV INN/ nace, como todo camino iniciático, de un punto de inflexión, de una búsqueda por captar la profunda realidad de lugares y situaciones donde la vida parece estar escapándose por la puerta de atrás.

Iñigo Sesma fija su mirada en todo aquello que desprende la inherente realidad del que sabe que algo tuvo “tiempos mejores”, impregnando los pinceles con la mirada furtiva de aquel que ha estado espiando y se ha llevado un objeto de la escena del crimen.

Desde los fragmentos congelados y las realidades imaginadas, Iñigo Sesma protege ese último resquicio de vitalidad en cada obra, retratando la lucha por sobrevivir al ocaso en la eternidad del lienzo¨.

 

Victoria Rivers

10. 2020

WIDEWALLS

The American urban infrastructure has inspired various artists throughout the second half of the 20th century as they explored the notion of getaway and alienation. No wonder this particular phenomenon invigorated artists' imagination as it mirrored numerous social and political implications.

Inspired by scenes encountered in several American statesduring his road trips, the young Basque artist Íñigo Sesma produces unique, cinematically inclined paintings saturated with unobtrusive social commentary. These remarkable everyday scenes evoke the void, isolation, and emptiness in a figurative fashion similar to the art by one Edward Hopper.

This month, Sesma’s solo exhibition at PDP Gallery in Paris will bring his series called Promised Land to light, to underline the way the artist articulates this particular approach to themes that seem to haunt him throughout his painterly practice.

 

Exploring The Urban Experience

Iñigo Sesma is no stranger to the urban experience as he emerged out of urban art. By perceiving the studio as a fluctuating thing in a constant movement, the artist instantly engages with contemporaneity and pushes figurative painting as a particular tendency forward. 

The upcoming exhibition is surely a continuation of his explorations of the genre as he connects with the American tradition of social realism and regionalism. Drizzled with social agency and infused with a dose of romanticism, his masterfully executed paintings unravel all the soft spots of the American society such as the class discrepancy and the commodification of everyday experience.

Between The Worlds Images

Sesma presented the first works featuring crossing of the United States from the East Coast to the West Coast within his solo exhibition called Unpaved Paradise in California in 2018. Back then, the artist felt inspired by the Ash Can School and American urban scenes, and that is when he presented a refined documentary approach that envelopes further with these works made during 2020. 

At the beginning of the pandemic, the artist leaves Baltimore to return to New York, the city of special relevance for his artistic development. From Ohio to Arizona by Missouri, he encounters different places that feed his imagination that becomes fully loaded in Pennsylvania where Sesme discovered astounding settings where time and life have stopped. 

Reminiscent of Jack Kerouac's road trips or even the atmosphere found in the works by Ed Ruscha, these intriguing paintings act as postcards from a world that has already transformed into something else; a reality that has become a caricature, a bitter joke that is hard to believe.

Iñigo Sesma at PDP Gallery

Iñigo Sesma’s melancholic depictions seem particularly subversive in regards to the paradigm of the American dream that shatters into pieces in the times of pandemic, racial tensions, and general political turmoil that is about to culminate with the American presidential elections this November. 

Promised Land will be on display at PDP Gallery in Paris from 17 October until 1 November 2020.

12. 2018

 

JUXTAPOX

Capturing the scenery, his experiences, and peculiar characters he met along the way with his camera, Sesma documented this journey both physically and emotionally. The experiences of different cultures, communities, urban spaces, and breathtaking landscapes, served as a great source of inspiration as well as reference for the body of work he painted for this showcase. Comprising of 22 new canvases, an indoor mural, and a video projection installation, Unpaved Paradise continues the legacy of The Beat Generation, and especially Jack Kerouac. In this spirit, the works are not including the standard narratives and are instead making somewhat spiritual quests while portraying the scenery and human condition of the places visited. Using actual locations as his reference, Sesma is reinventing the contemporary urban art by creating a special, authentic atmosphere in his work. Without trying to appear urban or trendy, his pictures are honest depictions of the mundane places visited and moments experienced, captured in a traditional painterly manner.

 

—Sasha Bogojev

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01.2016
Espositivo

A veces la realidad supera a la ficción. Pero en ocasiones, lo mundano necesita del engaño para provocar algo en el espectador. Iñigo Sesma sabe manejar esta dualidad a la perfección.

Su obra, llena de sátira e ironía, refleja escenarios muy urbanos donde siempre están pasando cosas. A simple vista parece una escena cotidiana, pero si te fijas bien, siempre hay algo que rompe los esquemas y roza lo absurdo. Oh sí, el fantástico mundo del absurdo. Agrega elementos, altera perspectivas y juega con el espacio según el discurso que le quiere a dar a cada obra. Otras veces sus óleos parecen inalterados, fruto de momentos que el artista captura y eleva a su estilo expresionista.

Intenta confundirnos, alterar nuestra percepción. Nosotros caemos atrapados en su onirismo y reflexionamos. Sobre la cotidianidad, la rutina, desde nuestra cocina hasta el domingo “extraordinario”. ¿Nos dejamos llevar demasiado por la corriente? Trabajamos, nos divertimos, envejecemos... Iñigo interpreta la realidad que ve, nosotros nos sentimos invitados a divagar sobre nuestra propia condición de personas que viven y respiran. 

Cintia Ramirez

¨Comisariado Espacio Espositivo, Madrid.¨

 
 

09. 2018

 

CREENÇA

I found several places where psychics and seers were advertised with large orange neons, in harmony with cocktail, burger and service stations lights. What I found as interesting, as much as I did strange; was the natural way in which these entities coexisted. The more niche and unusual businesses among the other more common services, in the middle of that road, that crossed that small village of North America.

 

This made me reflect on the importance of people on intangible and immaterial concepts, which lead me to create three pieces. Which outside of any religious paradigm, astrological or political, deal with the nature inherent in the human being in a sense of curiosity, about the powerful impulse this provokes in understanding the limits of reality and rationality.

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In 2009 at the University of Helsinki, thousands of people were surveyed in an effort to see how they thought the world worked. On the one hand, they tended to believe that random facts were actually caused by an invisible agent and on the other hand,  the degree of belief was in certain unexplained paranormal statements of reality. They were asked to say whether or not they believed in statements like: "The stars live in the sky" (belief in the inanimate natural objects are alive), "Planets know things" (belief that inanimate objects are animated), " Flowers want to light"  (belief that the living inanimate objects are animated).

 

They concluded with the belief that the facts always serve a purpose to form part of the same mental phenomenon to which they belong other paranormal beliefs.  This suggests that our brain does not make us believe that everything is governed by a supernatural purpose, but that faith in fate comes from the same mental structure as other paranormal beliefs generated by the human mind.

Iñigo Sesma

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10. 2017
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VETUS GALLERY

¨Una larga historia de conexiones y brechas dispares, que van desde la interacción recíproca y las influencias mutuas hasta las controversias, recorre las relaciones entre las artes visuales y la arquitectura. Aunque difieren en sus funciones comparten la creación de formas plurales de la experiencia y del habitar humano. Desde las vanguardias modernas de las primeras décadas del siglo XX hasta la condición global de nuestra contemporaneidad, esos préstamos y querellas han conllevado un hacer reflexivo permanente sobre sus propias disciplinas y sus relaciones. Esas conexiones configuran lo que Hal Foster ha denominado ¨el complejo arte-arquitectura¨. Iñigo Sesma construye imágenes pictóricas mediante una selección de fotografías de escenarios urbanos en los que incorpora ficciones y narraciones como fragmentos fílmicos. Disloca situaciones e identidades nómadas.

¨A long history of diverse connections and gaps, ranging from reciprocal interaction and mutual influences to controversies, runs through the relationship between the visual arts and architecture. Although different in their roles, they share the creation of plural shapes from human experience and dwelling. From the modern avant-garde of the fist decades of the 20th Century until the glocal condition of our days, those loans and disputes have led to a permanent reflection on their own disciplines and relationships. These connections configure what Hal Foster has called the “art-architecture complex”.

Iñigo Sesma builds pictorial images by selecting photographs of urban settings and incorporating fictions and stories as film clips. He shifts nomadic situations and identities.¨

Fernando Golvano

¨Comisario.¨ University of the Basque Country. (Philosophy of values and social anthropology).

 
 
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