Modalidades de lo visible. Irma Álvarez-Laviada
Press release
We are pleased to present Irma Álvarez-Laviada (Gijón, 1978) and her first exhibition—Modalidades de lo visible—at the Luis Adelantado Gallery, which will open on November 24th in the gallery’s main space.
The Asturian artist developed her thesis at the University of Vigo, under the title Emptiness as a Self-reflexive Display of the Artist’s Own Work. Undoubtedly, this research gives her work a theoretical basis, which is substantiated in its formal soundness. It also implies a declaration of intent regarding her plastic work, in which painting goes beyond the limits of matter, approaching modality techniques that are typical of sculpture and installation. Within this idea in mind, it is worth emphasising Irma’s interest in the notion of emptiness, the starting point of some of her most representative works
In Modalidades de lo visible we can find a series of pieces that question us about the very limits of perception, alluding to the intellectual John Berger and his Ways of seeing, a work already considered to be a classic within artistic literature due to the validity of its claims. Vision is not innocent, it always exudes awareness and decides what is visible. Choice is also, therefore, a modality of the visible.
Irma’s works show susceptible voids that can be completed by vision. Other works speak of everyday life reconverted into artwork thanks to a view that gives them meaning through the transience of the present. She also uses the resource of reiteration in some of her pieces with the intention of fixing our eyes on them, in search for the completing ability that remains in the hands of the viewer before every work.