Darío Urzay

He studied Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country between 1977 and 1982. Since then, his artistic positioning has been firmly and critically anchored in figuration, in the problematic of representing what surrounds us. In fact, his work has been associated since the late eighties and nineties with those neofigurative currents that have settled in the pictorial with a hybrid and integrative attitude toward diverse techniques. Resin, photography, and digital prints have been formative elements of his personal poetics that has evolved toward increasingly less referential compositions that seem to oscillate between microbiology and landscape.

Darío Urzay has developed in this last decade a series of fascinating works—in the most literal and almost hypnotic sense of the word—in which photography and painting are articulated in a manner as personal as it is complex (to employ two terms in common use that cease to have meaning as such in this age-old struggle deployed by Urzay). In many respects, it is extraordinarily difficult to distinguish the photographic, digital, and/or pictorial nature of these magnificent impeccably resolved pieces. Beyond, before, or inseparably "attached" to all of this (like the dazzling film of transparent synthetic resin), the interest of his work is strengthened through calm contemplation and perception.

In an unusual manner, Urzay demonstrates to us the close link that exists between abstraction and figuration. To abstract is synonymous with essential, with substantial. When an artist—as Darío Urzay does—is capable of working deeply with the essential, he distances himself from that identification that abstract art—and especially painting—has had to bear as a burden: abstraction = decorative. On the contrary, abstraction is the basis of conceptual thought. Visual thought that some creators know how to materialize effectively.

Text provided by the Mediterranean Foundation. Author: J. B. Peiró.