'The blue'

The word Blue, which we recognize and use as a masculine name or adjective, is magnified to encompass an endless set of meanings. Because each person's personal perceptions and distorted memories can be infinite.

Mari Quiñonero - The Álvaro Alcázar Gallery presents the first solo exhibition of Mari Quiñonero as a new artist of the gallery. “Lo azul” is an exhibition created exclusively for this space and follows a large-scale personal project.

This is an exhibition of twelve works that reveal the artist's evolution in the creative process of her series "Color and Vacuum"; a work that goes beyond abstraction and focuses on the diversity of shapes and colors. The exhibition is composed of an unpublished text and a series of pictorial works on canvas and paper around which the use of color is studied beyond mere plastic expression, opening a range of possibilities that takes the artist to more moving areas.

This journey through the colour blue continues its journey in a collective exhibition, in which works by gallery artists such as Mari Puri Herrero, Rafael Canogar, Peter Krauskopf, Rebeca Plana and Guillem Nadal and guest artists such as Alejandro Botubol and Jude Castel can be seen.

As a whole, both exhibitions reveal this “carousel of irrefutable blues”, as defined by Mari Quiñonero, and which reveal, in effect, numerous emotional perceptions. Rafael Canogar leaves in his works the trace of the metaphorical and lyrical intensity of the pictorial surface. In the work that we present in this exhibition, “Winter”, blue acquires even greater strength as a representation of that season. Peter Krauskopf also manages to give an almost wintery dimension to blue in his pictorial brushstrokes, to the point of turning it into a chilling one with those metallic and shiny tones, so similar to ice.

Blue can also represent memories of a city. Jude Castel represents his vision of Madrid in various works using pen on paper through monuments or emblematic buildings. Blue can also be a memory of water, of the sea. For Rebeca Plana it is an approach to the Mediterranean and so is Guillem Nadal. Even Alejandro Botubol gives it a mystical character to the point that his blue manages to light up on its own.

Finally, in the middle of the room we find a monumental sculpture by Mari Puri Herrero, “Cabeza lectora” (Reading Head) in that colour “Bilbao blue” as she defines it, which is an example of how comfortable she feels painting with that colour. According to the artist, blue tends to expand better, and how could it not do so if it is the colour of the sky, of water? It is a colour that allows you to feel free in movement.

In short, with these two exhibitions, we may be able to express our own ideas and emotions regarding this colour. We may even succeed, as Mari Puri says, in making us feel less confined by the colour blue.