Pamplona (EFE).- The Oteiza Museum is hosting the exhibition Frisoa, a project developed by the artist Xabier Salaberria (Donostia, 1969), which takes as its starting point the work ‘Homage to Father Donosti’, a stone wall relief made in 1959 by the sculptor Jorge Oteiza, for its location in the Banco Guipuzcoano in Donostia.
This intervention, presented this Thursday at the Alzuza museum, is made up of a set of seven pieces, made by Salaberria between 2022 and 2023, which include sculptures, photographic installations, an audiovisual piece and a large frieze measuring 470 x 130 centimeters, which It supposes a “free and contemporary approximation” to the original relief created by Oteiza at the end of the decade of the 50s of the last century.
Years before its creation, the architect Luis Vallet y Oteiza had been commissioned by the Aranzadi Science Society to pay tribute to the composer José Gonzalo Zulaika y Arregi “Aita Donostia”. To respond to this commission, they remember from the museum, they created a chapel and a stela located in Agiña, the homonymous megalithic station located in Lesaka and which houses various prehistoric elements such as cromlechs, dolmens and burial mounds.
Linked to this project was the frieze that is currently in the Sabadell Guipuzcoano financial institution in Donostia and contains some of the formal characteristics of the Agiña monumental complex.
A rereading of Oteiza’s original frieze
In this case, they point out, Salaberria has carried out a rereading of Oteiza’s original frieze, maintaining the same proportions. The green background of the mural, along with the composition of superimposed objects, resemble the billiard games by Ben Nicholson, an artist with whom Oteiza shared the prize list at the IV São Paulo Biennial in 1957.
His spatial and geometric compositions are close to the sculptural concerns addressed by Oteiza in those years.
On the other hand, they point out, Oteiza’s attention to the pedagogical is reflected in Salaberria’s interest in industrial design and work tools, as well as in his understanding of space and his attachment to play.
Together with the frieze, this exhibition presents the other works that belong to this same project, as well as the Aska piece, which starts from the approach to the fountain that Oteiza built in Alzuza in 1986 and which today can be seen outside the Museum.
“Put the ball back in the game”
In the same way, the work I/K Frisoa seriea is included, an audiovisual approximation to the way in which modern technique allows the construction of form, highlighting the consideration that sculptural processes have depended on the material and technology available in each period. .
This exhibition has been organized by the Oteiza y Tabakalera Foundation, an entity that hosted a first exhibition of this project a few months ago, and has been produced thanks to the collaboration of the Banco Sabadell Art Collection and Artingenium.
The exhibition includes the edition of a fold-out poster that includes the text ‘Give the ball back to the game’, written by Oier Etxeberria, artist and head of Public Programs and Curatorship at Tabakalera