Symbolism

Ignacio Uriarte adopts the reductionist strategies of minimalism (less is more), while committing to everyday materials and a restricted field of action (do more with less). A former employee who left the corporate world but never abandoned the office, he works with humble office supplies (pens, ink, markers, rulers, etc.) and repetitive gestures (scribbling, typing, stamping). His work turns routine into a central theme, and accumulation – of actions, time, and habits – into a way of contemplating who we are and how we understand the world at large.

For his third solo exhibition with Gaep, Uriarte produced a new body of work that both consolidates his visual vocabulary – a rigorous synthesis of geometry and color – and signals a shift in his practice. The works, all completed over the past two years, share the use of geometric forms as recurring structural elements and of dynamic configurations that generate various visual effects: movement, depth, three-dimensionality, distortion, light and shadow.

The nine drawings that give the exhibition its title form a group of abstract symbols that engage with the history of graphic design, while also evoking quasi-religious signs. They are inspired by logos from the 1950s and 1960s, when a new design language emerged, defined by formal simplification and post-war optimism. An alternative reading, related to spiritual iconography, also surfaces, suggested by the illusion of radiating light, as if the scribbled shapes were glowing. Particularly new for Uriarte is the chromatic play he devised for this group of works – as described by the artist, “it’s a trip through the rainbow,” inspired by playing with his eldest daughter. Uriarte attributes this playful approach and colorful new aesthetic to an organic development of his work (“If my practice is a tree, I’m at the branches now. I’ve done the roots and the trunk.”) and to his recent move from Berlin to Valencia (“There’s a quality of light that is just different in Spain. Strong colors that might have seemed strange in Germany look fantastic here.”).

Elsewhere in the exhibition, seven geometric compositions in blue tones invoke the intensely handmade and the intensely mechanical. Viewed up close, the materiality of the scribbled triangles, loops, and stripes asserts itself: lines that seemed perfectly straight reveal subtle deviations, solid fields of color show variations in density. From a distance, the sequential patterns in many of these works mirror the fragmented architecture of their surroundings. The architectural features of this part of the gallery, with lower ceiling and supporting pillars, shaped the artist’s chromatic decisions as well (“The space made me think of an underwater cave, hence the blue tones.”).

Other pursuits require no color. Black scribbling allows Uriarte to focus on suggesting depth and spatial volume on paper. His monochrome drawings foreground the potential slipperiness of seemingly objective geometric forms: a grid appears to protrude into three-dimensional space through an optical illusion and a sequence of concentric squares morphs into a passage to another place.

Bracketing the monochrome drawings are two wall installations occupying an intermediate space between the flat surface and the three-dimensional body. Made using ordinary office rulers, they highlight the intrinsic qualities of these materials. Following his first ruler installations that were made for the previous solo exhibition with Gaep (Sequential Operations, 2022), the artist returns to pushing line across the plane into physical space, this time through sequences of progressive growth and shifting parallels.

Uriarte’s practice is driven by a process of reflection that constantly revisits issues of form, structure, space, and color. Rife with art-historical references, they draw upon Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Op Art, and Concretism. Within these artistic lineages, Uriarte stands out through his adherence to the tools, gestures, and protocols of office life. Even when his forms touch on spiritual symbols or portals to alternate dimensions, they remain anchored in the repetitive rhythms of labor.