Amaya Suberviola

Untitled

2023

Módulo Porte series

Handmade screenprint on paper with 8 layers (1/17)

48 x 72 cm

Inv. no. 558914, 558915, 558916, 558917

BBVA Collection Spain



Amaya Suberviola’s work responds to many of the major issues of concern to her generation, as part of a group of artists who are returning painting to a prominent position within contemporary art. Though it has never lost its intrinsic importance, in recent years painting as a medium has had to compete with other techniques, such as digital art. While technology affords a wide range of tools like video or photography, which make it easier to interpret reality, the direct contact with materials and techniques involved in the practice of the fine arts gives these disciplines a primacy over artistic expressions achieved by digital means. That being said, the painter’s freedom is also limited by these same materials and techniques which must be managed in the execution of their works. In this context, Suberviola’s painting is significant insomuch as it seeks to overcome these limitations by using new technologies as yet another tool.

At the moment her work is currently focused on Pantallas (Screens), a project predicated on research into creating images through windows on the computer screen. She uses the desktop as a virtual workspace and transforms digital compositions into fine artworks, translating the digital into a painterly language. The windows represent image modules that can be manipulated, enlarged, reduced, overlapped or mirrored, enabling her to structure compositions to fulfil her goals. Suberviola explores the aesthetic qualities of this process, seeking to generate paintings using non-conventional language. Her approach is rooted in the association between the formal features of this process and her interest in representing space and the construction of motifs within the limits of the frame, similar to what happens on our screens, where different realities coexist.

Suberviola describes her process of creating paintings as a form of layering. Each layer represents an image from her personal archive or distorted fragments of these images, chosen for their visual appearance without necessarily taking their meaning into consideration. As the artist explains, “it’s like when you use a business card as a bookmark or a clothes peg to close a bag of rice.” For her, accumulated mistakes can produce a success, but a surfeit of successes can also lead to a mistake. As such, it is necessary to maintain a careful balance, which is achieved when the final layer is integrated without creating a new void. Suberviola says that her discovery of pentimenti in painting occurred when she saw a painting by Velázquez where a horse appeared to have five legs. The correction of one of the legs, originally invisible but gradually revealed over time due to the degradation of the material, ended up adjusting the horse’s stance. Suberviola compares this idea to her own works, suggesting that they are full of “fifth legs” which may not be obvious but contribute to the evolution of the work. These “fifth legs” represent connections or influences that are invisible yet significant.

This work entered the BBVA Collection in 2023 thanks to the BBVA Acquisition Award at the 12th FIG Bilbao held annually at Palacio Euskalduna. The primary goal of this specialized art fair is to promote printmaking and work on paper, not just modern and contemporary but also from all eras.