Almas. Cristóbal Ortega

Miguel Marcos Gallery presents Almas, an exhibition by the artist Cristóbal Ortega bringing together a selection of works in which he engages both the front and the reverse of the canvas, allowing the paint to pass through the fabric. This process gives rise to what he calls “souls” and forms a line of work that began in 2011 in Songzhuang (Beijing), shortly after his arrival in China following an exhibition at the Instituto Cervantes in 2009.

The origin of these pieces lies in the very behavior of the materials: by using untreated linen, the oil paint penetrates the surface and emerges on the reverse, generating a kind of “sweating.” Ortega approaches the canvas as an expanded field, intervening on both sides and rotating it in different positions, in a procedure akin to all-over painting that dissolves hierarchies and orientations. In this context, the unseen side of the work—the reverse—takes on a decisive role, understood by the artist as the place where the “soul” of the work resides.

The exhibition Almas focuses precisely on this latent dimension of painting. The works presented allow this “soul” to manifest more clearly, in dialogue with an idea of geometry inspired by Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges, where perception—both visual and tactile—transforms and redefines forms.

Ortega’s pictorial practice approaches an architectural conception: each work is conceived as a construction in which matter, gesture, and time shape an unstable equilibrium. Far from technical rigidity, his work embraces the unpredictable, giving rise to constantly evolving surfaces. The filtration of oil through the linen creates accumulations and transparencies, while colors intertwine in dynamics of tension and harmony. This interplay of opposites constitutes one of the fundamental axes of his painting.