CONTICINIO.

Alain Urrutia's work is all about searching. A perennial and extensive search that goes further and further. Each project, each painting is part of a large mental map that is constantly growing. As he travels through new ideas and territories, he approaches and walks away from what he is relentlessly searching for, what remains imperishable under the stillness of the images. First emotions and reflex actions. Common places, primary elements. To give that moment of intimacy back to those who stand in front of his work and unconsciously recognise something in it.

To look at and walk into Alain Urrutia's paintings leads to a dialogue with ourselves, but also to an exercise of reinterpretation. The images extracted as fragments of everyday life allude both to self-references and archetypes. Time, pause, noise and silence.

In “Conticinio”, Urrutia searches for silence through painting. The Latin word conticinium, which translates to "when all things seem to be silent", alludes to one of the seven parts of the night that were identified in ancient times. The only one in which all sounds cease because everyone is already resting, the moment of absolute silence in which the day ends and the night has not yet begun; when humans and beasts are sleeping. Conticinium may last a long time or last for only a few moments, but everyone knows that it will come to an end. The absolute stillness of the night is a moment people truly treasure, as they know that it may vanish any moment. The same applies to the paintings featured in this exhibition; they reveal a moment of absolute calm, a hint of profound but fragile silence. 

The weightlessness of a feather, a sleeping woman, the dull sound of a candle that has just gone out... all of them are images of silence, a sustained silence that leads the viewers to stand still while holding their breath and trying to decode what happened before and after that moment. What will happen when silence is broken and the conticinium ends?

CONTICINIO. Exhibition view at Pelaires Gallery. Palma de Mallorca, 2021. 

CONTICINIO. Exhibition view at Pelaires Gallery. Palma de Mallorca, 2021. 

CONTICINIO. Exhibition view at Pelaires Gallery. Palma de Mallorca, 2021.