Galería ATC is pleased to announce Vertical, an exhibition of 16 works by Canarian artist Juan Pedro Ayala (1972-2019). The opening will take place on Friday 17 September from 18:00 to 21:00, at Calle Callao de Lima, 39, Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The exhibition will remain open to the public until 20 November.
In his works on paper, Ayala has painted trees. By means of a fluid brushstroke, he has placed them in front of an undefined horizon and on a field of spots that merges with their trunks. Using mixed techniques, including fire and its burning effect, Ayala conveys both fragility and resistance. Although the destructive forces have left wounds in the skin of the trees - as well as in the artwork itself - we sense that the trees have no alternative but to continue to grow. It is this combination of destructive and generative events which fuels the fluidity and indeterminacy of life.
In the large-scale paintings of mandala trees (mixed media on canvas), the body of the viewer, and of the artist, is apparently transfigured into a tree trunk with its limbs and branches extending upwards. Along with this movement, this point of view also reflects the fragmentation of our body and the impossibility of taking it all in with our gaze. The eyes can only flit and jump, like birds, from one branch to another, knowing of the possibility of elevation. Up close, we lose ourselves in the fragments, and only when we step back do we begin to grasp the totality of these paintings. If in a landscape it is the horizon line that separates the earth from the sky and positions the viewer at the necessary distance to observe a panorama, its absence in Ayala's works reorients our relationship with the ground plane.
It is with Juan Pedro's works that, as children, our experience of the world is understood through an upward gaze. Vertical thus reflects our rootedness to the ground and also a reflective look at the sky.
Juan Pedro Ayala (1972-2019) was born in Tenerife. With a degree in Fine Arts from the University of La Laguna, he had his first exhibition "Las once mil" at the Magda Lázaro gallery in 1998. This was followed by other exhibitions at the same gallery in Santa Cruz de Tenerife: "Árboles" (2003) - a pre-figuration of what was to become his painting -, "O Cielo" (2013) and "Castillo 58" with Maribel Nazco (2018). Other exhibitions of note are "Globo Rojo Sonda", in 2018, at the Centro de Arte La Regenta (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria); "Azul", in 2009, at the Ateneo de La Laguna (Tenerife); "Un jardín para Marián", in 2008-9, at the SAC (Santa Cruz de Tenerife); and "Días de perros", in 2011, at the Galería La Guayaba (Santa Cruz de Tenerife). Excellens Painting Prize for young artists awarded by the Real Academia Canaria de Bellas Artes in 2013 and winner of the Bienal de Artes Plásticas de Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 2010. His works can be found in the collections of TEA Tenerife Espacio de Las Artes and CAAM Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, as well as in private collections.
