The New Age of Spanish Art: Contemporary Mysticism

by Victoria Rivers
Share this

THE MARKET NEEDS IT, OUR MIND NEEDS IT.

It’s indisputable that a new way of seeing things is taking over the galleries and fairs, still minority and in contrast to an aesthetic figuration empowered by Asian demand and trend, collecting, abstraction, and expressionism makes their way with perseverance and introspective processes linked more to the existential-vital poetics.

That balance between empirical art (what our eye recognizes at first sight), and art created from the imperceptible has always been there, the “spiritual in art” is intrinsic to its being, but this doesn’t mean that we are connected to it.

Esther-Miquel -E-018.23

A great lack of magic seems to take hold of the world, we seem to have forgotten that “the essential is invisible to the eye” (1) we need to fly higher and look for that which challenges our senses. To perceive, to reflect, to think…, to go beyond the imperative, beyond the currents. To perceive the artist’s conflict is to be one step closer to self-knowledge. Art, music, literature widen our souls and let us know that we are not as alone as we think.

Perceiving the environment and generating a process outside, to the continuous information we receive, has become something sacred now a days. We are talking about the increasingly plausible imposition of creation, which is born of holistic intelligence and which, as Jung said (2), is based on the understanding of reality through thought, feeling, sensation and intuition.

Sergio Gómez- Swinton Gallery

This type of intelligence, also called intuitive, is based on that sixth sense that we all have and that, due to the logical method, which prevails in these times, we atrophy as we grow older.

Kandinsky said that the important thing was to “wake up”. Hilma Af Klimt woke up, becoming a channel of creation. The cubists sought a new dimension and the new forms of thought created the first avant-gardes.

I truly believe that our sixth sense makes us perceive the sixth sense that surrounds the work of an artist, “real recognizes real”. We speak of the extraordinary, of that which makes your heart shrink without knowing why, knowing that you are observing something beyond a pure image or composition, that which in one way or another nourishes your spirit.

Natalia Lopez Desire Paths, Herrero de Tejada

Today, the extraordinary is once again making its way in our times, a new avant-garde, “contemporary mysticism”, is beginning to take over the circuits little by little.

The “rara avis”(3) of this renaissance work and create from this wonderful introverted dimension that invokes intuition, psyche and philosophy.

Then, we are closer to the teachings of Castaneda’s writings (4) who showed us the limitations of those who “insist on understanding certain things with the mind and not with the heart”(5).

In Spain we find a pioneering boom of this avant-garde that does not respond to a specific age, nor to a context, nor to a place, but to something higher that we may never be able to decipher.

Backed by galleries that firmly believe in this new search and know how to perceive the need for art that goes beyond the five senses. This is where we enter the universe of some of these artists, of this contemporary mystique.

SERGIO GÓMEZ

Sergio Gómez

Sergio Gómez (Seville, 1983) known as “Srgr” is an observer of the space and the world he inhabits. In his act of contemplation he captures the beauty of all the events and elements of our environment that feed the whole imaginary that he then develops in the intimacy of his studio.

Creator of a unique language, his work teaches us the greatness of the ordinary world through a symbolic decoding of the elements that abound in urban space. A passive walker who seeks error with a smile.

“Seeing is not thought and not felt, what we see as the antithesis of the process of creation. Starting from the modality of the non-visible to feed the thought to be as close as possible to our story that we call “the true”. A process linked to time, every moment is changing, and this change is perceptible as are the structures that surround it at that moment”.

– Sergio Gómez

(Sergio Gomez, fragment extracted from the exhibition “Inventing Reality”).

Work by Sergio Gomez

A work that emanates a great embrace to the “mistakes” of our environment and shows us silence as a fundamental ingredient of creation.

Hits and misses from the dialectic of the studio where the space traveled becomes part of his canvases and papers. An act of constant play where this seeker shows us that there are no hits without misses and there is no path without walking.

ESTHER MIQUEL

Esther Miquel

The work of Esther Miquel (1983, Barcelona) is comparable to the work of the Sherpa who accompanies the traveler on the ascent to the mountain. Outside the objective of conquering the highest peak, these almost invisible travelers have been in most of the occasions the first to reach the goal.

In a profound act of consciousness and continuous reflection, their work derives a great personal power that only lets us see a fraction of its full reality. Here is the mystery or rather the question that every observer asks, what lies beyond the canvas

A few years ago, during a winter hike in the Pyrenees, I used an ice axe to navigate a challenging journey. When I finally reached the summit, I felt a profound inner silence, even though we could say the environment wasn’t “safe or silent” at all. At that time, I was already experimenting with meditation, but this experience was different. Since that day in the Pyrenees, the ice axe has held special significance for me and has become a recurring schematic motif in my artwork.

– Esther Miquel
Esther Miquel – E-001.24+E-002.24

How to hear the sound of the mountain again? Through creation. We translate into the language of the studio that ascent to the mountain and we understand how in an act of passive meditation there is always repetition. We see how those steps become “brushstrokes” and we see how the shape of the ice axe on the snow is now the recurring pattern of her works.

Step by step, concentrated and with an enviable physical/mental strength, we see how this traveler continues to ascend the canvas instilling in us a state of unparalleled introspection.

ALBERTO ARDID

Alberto Ardid

In the fire of Alberto Ardid (Vigo, 1986) we can see the future of everything in the ashes. Existential poetics in pure essence, his sculptures and installations transmit the force of chaos in perfect balance, destruction and creation at first sight.

Conceptual and ironic in nature, the philosophical mood of his creations leads us to wander through a myriad of historical, geographical and cultural strata. His work represents the rebirth of something that exists and existed but was crying out to re-exist again.

Alberto Ardid, Arniches Gallery

“These sculptural works have multiple layers of reading, but they all start from the central idea of recomposition after disaster, of the rebirth of a new form from others. A concept that links with the multicultural tradition of the Greek Phoenix Bird, the Egyptian Bennu or the Japanese Aosaginohi, to which is added this particular Galician vision of the animal that rises from its ashes and prepares to take flight again.”

– Alberto Ardid
Alberto Ardid – Narcos – Arniches gallery

In some cases he destroys and in others he “repairs” whose Latin root takes us to “amend” or “fix again”, we could say that his constructive poetics always makes us face a reflection, seeking to generate a double twist to the viewer, where history plays a crucial role in the interpretation of his work.

In all his work a new presence is perceived, a phoenix that pretends to change its plumage playing with the spectator, but that in essence is the same… but in an improved version. Celebrating the past and celebrating its new life.

NATALIA LÓPEZ de OLIVA

Natalia Lopez de Oliva

The dreamlike abstraction of Natalia López de Oliva (1998, Tomelloso) engages the viewer at the first glance. Inevitable not to feel that there is a vital and ancestral experience in her painting where the intuitive technique joins a great connection with the divine.

This young artist unveils through her plastic art a subtle form of creation that glorifies all that is mundane. The signs of the invisible world become corporeal in her strokes, the expressiveness of her painting becomes fire, water, silence and dreams. His contemporary mysticism traps us in a myriad of visions that give off a state of perpetual wakefulness.

“I use painting as a protest, a destabilizer of tradition, a magnifying power. It is powerful because it creates a space dedicated to the inner world. It is a cauldron of water where everything that surrounds us is cooked, in bits and pieces.”

– Natalia Lopez de Oliva
Natalia López Una mujer va con la boca abierta todo el viaje en metro

Painting is her way of communicating with the world from an elevated feeling and a great desire to show the truth of the world. Natalia Lopez generates a work that vibrates high and challenges the prevailing methods recovering and imposing existential reflections and the clear idea that we are all a channel of communication with the intangible.

References:
(1) Le petit Prince -Anthony de Saint Exupery
(2) Blink: El poder de pensar sin pensar – Malcom Macdowell – 2005.
(3) Raras Avis: En latín significa literalmente ‘ave rara’ y se usa con el sentido de ‘persona o cosa excepcional o difícil de encontrar’ .
(4) *Las Enseñanzas de Don Juan: Un Camino Yaqui de ConocimientoCarlos Castaneda, 1968

Related Articles

2 comments

5 Standout Shows to See at Small Galleries This January – BublikArt Gallery January 2, 2025 - 8:50 pm

[…] brightly colored abstract paintings as introspective tools. In a recent conversation with Overstandard, she described her approach: “I use painting as a protest, a destabilizer of tradition, a […]

5 standout shows to see in small galleries in January – Modern Art January 2, 2025 - 9:56 pm

[…] his explosive and colorful abstract paintings as introspective tools. In a recent conversation with Too much patternShe described her approach: “I use painting as a protest, a destabilizer of tradition, a […]

Comments are closed.