According to Álvarez Enjunto, the exhibit’s organizer, the person who best reflected the spirit of white was Kasimir Malevich. In his vocabulary of forms colors play and essential role since they are finally reduced to fundamental colors. Only then do they make possible the dynamism of the different geometric bodies. In 1919 Malevich wrote: "black is the sign of the economy; red, sign of revolution; and white, that of motion." For Malevich white symbolized nothingness.

However, nothingness in art (indeed in other fields as well) opens up many pathways for reflections and analysis, yet it does so not only in the field of thought, but also in the field of aesthetics, visual arts and the beauty of images. Moreover, white in its own expression is a void. Arriving at white and its seduction allows us to be wrapped up in it and governed by its silence. Due to its sensation of emptiness it unclothes our senses, emotions, the totality of our soul, going beyond that which is strictly aesthetic.

Jordi Alcaraz, Ana de Alvear, Ricardo Calero, Juan Galdeano, Concha García, Natividad Navalón and Gerardo Sigler use white in this collection as subject for expository development, in order to formalize it into a harmonious visualization. All the artists make different symbolic models coincide, and in so doing, attempt to add a special perspective to the debate about white. The exhibit organizer, José María Álvarez Enjunto includes very few artists in the project, and in a very special way, selected a small number of pieces from the body of their work.

WHITE AS TRIGGER OF CONTRADICTORY SENSATIONS

The selection of these unique pieces is designed to evoke a variety of effects. In addition to the ideal principles guiding the exhibit, the idea is to stimulate the visitor through play, surprises, disorientation, perplexity and provocation. The selection of the individual pieces and their spatial distribution dictates the organization and the outcome of the exhibit, as well as the role that the visiting public plays in it.

The spirituality and the mystery of the color white can be sensed through the grouping of exhibit pieces, through the sensibilities and intentions of the participating artists and through the sensations elicited from the public. All of these match the characteristics of this color, since it is the broadest in terms of chromatic differences.

There is certainly a mystery invoked by these seven artists in the event sponsored by La Fundación Telefónica.


ARTISTS CONVENED AROUND THE COLOR WHITE

Jordi Alcaraz (Calella, Barcelona, 1963)

The work of Alcaraz in this exhibit is designed to demonstrate the thesis that he himself has been developing in recent years: the irreducibility of white above all, within a dimensional or three-dimensional iconographic framework. White as an autonomous appearance, basically, as an exercise of freedom. Xavier Barral i Altet writes about Alcaraz: "Bend the line, interrupt its function on the paper to bring it towards us and make it transform itself into sculpture, one that challenges the laws of drawing. Alcaraz draws in space and in many ways. He breaks the horizon and outlines the wind or looks at it, but in a simple way, without affectation, with our very own eyes that the artist has borrowed."

Ana de Alvear (Madrid, 1962)

Very quickly, Calero's work makes one consider the presence of nothingness and its perception through the senses; nothingness as a void due to the idleness of ultramodernity. Nothingness, void, and the inevitable silence, not through absence, rather through sensorial stimulation. Thus, white takes on an incalculable value as object, as real image, directed exclusively at the spirit. Calero is rich with her capacity for this language of vagueness and she places the viewer in a privileged seat.

Concha García (Santander, 1960)

García’s work shares a complicity with white, allowing it to enjoy a hierarchical autonomy with this color. The silence and reserve provided us by the textures of this color in García’s hands transport us to the physical body the subject of portraits, televisions, videos and magnetoscope projectors.

Juan Galdeano (Almería, 1955)

After his time in New York, Galdeano discovered that art is not only a personal revelation materialized, but that it also has the ability to make the person viewing a piece feel something intensely. Galeano registers every situation this way, by converting it artistically into a bold and extravagant suggestion. Everything is admitted into the creations of Galdeano: life, the strange and never-before-seen, purity, game-playing and fantasy. Galdeano’s art acquires a dimensional quality and demands the attention of the public’s senses.

Natividad Navalón (Valencia, 1961)

Her arrival at white is the result of an extremely lengthy process of reflection on the nature of women, their intimate aspects and their relationship to men in a society dominated by them. Natividad Navalón tries to reconstruct the essential points of feminine reality, looking for the reasons behind many things. First there were scarlets and dark tones, the abyss and the mirror. Later, white, tied to an endless world of feminine references. Her work represents the intimate process of the role of women in their relationships with men.

Gerardo Sigler (Valencia, 1957)

Sigler chose paraffin for his art pieces and the human form to construct his artistic discourse. Men and women in their anonymous dimension, without identity, faceless, without an autonomous presence, grouped and piled together, hanging from a rope on any corner. The indefiniteness in our time creates massive groupings, and the appearance of man as a lost figure amidst the tumult of loneliness.

"Whites, voids and silences"

Opening:
April 5, 2001, 7:30 p.m.

Information: Obdulio Martín Bernal ( Phone: 91-584-8996; Fax: 91-584-0697; Email: obdulio.martinbernal@telefonica.es) and Carmen Mañueco (Phone: 91-584-0424; Fax: 91-532-3287; Email: carmen.manuecogrinda@telefonica.es)