Cristóbal Ortega (Alhaurín de la Torre, Málaga, 1970) lives and works between Beijing and Malaga. His education as an architect, his beginnings as a watercolorist and the artistic influences of abstract expressionism, will avenge his earlier painting. After his exhibition at the Cervantes Institute in Beijing in 2009, he decided to settle in China, and move to Beijing his workshop in 2014. The Asian influence is manifested in his most recent artwork and his creativity is enriched for the artistic and philosophical tradition of this country.
The one man show Sunyata that will take place from January 9th to February 23rd. The artist from Málaga shows at the Galería Miguel Marcos for the second time. Previously, he exposed in the individual show Háptica (April of 2015) and the collective exhibitions Black Box (November of 2014) and Abstraction (December of 2017). Cristóbal Ortega’s artworks were shown in Europe and Asia.
The Galería Miguel Marcos presents Sunyata show, composed of unpublished artwork. The title of the exhibition is related to the ancestral concept of emptiness, understood in the Oriental way as the potential for life and change. It has nothing to do with total nothingness, but with the existential essence of all beings and the phenomena of nature. The technique used is the perspiration of oil paint through the layers of linen. The vigorous brush strokes and the vibrant colors appear on the neutral background.
The artist himself affirms that "painting is not a finished discourse, but a process that enriches with time". Cristóbal Ortega considers that in his painting is "more important, what is not shown, but what is shown" an artistic conception related to Eastern philosophy. This concept is related to the Chinese idea of shen tou, which translates as "what comes from behind". The Sudoraciones series is a projection of color spots and energetic strokes in the background and the obverse of the work, which dialogue with each other, and which catch the viewer in their conversation.
Cristóbal Ortega conceives the Sudoraciones series as if they were an architectural project. The pictorial refers to the architectural. He escapes the technical and formal rigidity and enjoys the erratic and incalculable. The canvases are the result of the unpredictable, characterized by free expression in the creative process. "I do not consider the work as a unit, nor do I look for symmetry, I rely mostly on non-formal aspects," says the painter.
The expressionist painting of the artist from Málaga moves between anarchy and abstraction. The essential part of his work arises from the chromaticism, the materiality and the expressiveness. Although a simple view of the canvases they produce the feeling of a disordered and meaningless entity, the truth is that it is an artwork full mathematic and balanced thought, as a contrast of forces, carried out by a justified sensibility. The textures are background and form, which lie in the depths of the canvas and move on the visible surface.