BilbaoArte unveils “Bordea”, the solo show of Gabriel Coca’s work, at URIBITARTE40 Hall

Bilbao City Council’s artistic production centre unveils a new exhibition at URIBITARTE40 Hall. Featuring the work of one of the centre’s scholarship holders, Gabriel Coca, “Bordea” [Edging] is the fourth solo show at the venue.

The artist was selected by an external  professional jury made up of  Zuhar Iruretagoiena (Zarautz, 1981), Fermín Moreno (Bilbao, 1970) and Ixone Sádaba (Bilbao, 1977) — all of whom are working artists and were awarded scholarships by BilbaoArte in previous years; this exhibition will be the first of the three solo projects to be held at Sala URIBITARTE40 during the 2024/25 academic year. The artists Argiñe Ceballos Gelozaga (Ugao-Miraballes, 1999) and Amaia Gracia Azqueta (Pamplona, 1985) will round off the centre’s programme until June 2025, along with a group exhibition on the BilbaoArte Bilduma Collection organised by the curators Lorenzo Galgó and Iñigo Villafranca Apesteguía.

Bordea [Edging] is an exhibition showcasing a large set of small, medium and large format drawings and paintings produced during the artist’s months at BilbaoArte on the grant with the loan of a studio.  The artist has developed a new body of work that engages in dialogue with earlier proposals, and where the gesture of breaking and generating tension of the pictorial space – by opposing forces – along with finding harmony are present.  Forms produced using strokes, overlapping layers and thicknesses help the artist to highlight the corporeality of painting, to circulate on the surface of the painting, to mark out and monitor the perimeter; to enter and exit the borders, to occupy everything, remove any excess, set a rhythm, advance, retreat and move inwards.  Coca considers the edge of the stroke to be a line, a form that marks out, both separates and contains, unites and defines, crisscrosses and brings into contact.

Bordea focuses on drawing and painting, and condenses some of the concerns and reflections that he explores in his artistic practice.  This work is the outcome of exploring the procedure of his pictorial practice.  The artist develops a methodology – based on drawing – to find forms and new hand movements.  Driven by the desire to discover new forms to solve the pictorial image, Coca decided to move away from the pictorial language and to start from paper cuttings made haphazardly, which he then edged with charcoal or applied regular and irregular strokes.  This new way of working made him think of drawing as a means to manage the surface, to think of paper – that white rectangular – as space; and drawing as a means to perceive the space and a means to be in time.  He has thus chanced on a place where to focus and discover forms, on which he then intervenes in different ways.

Similar and very different things occur in his pictorial works.  The artist sees the empty surface of the fabric – that white rectangle – as a space to occupy.   The artist uses the stroke of drawing as the starting point; he unleashes the hand gesture to make marks to guide his eye and allow him to organise the space.  At this point, Coca de-constructs the image, breaks it down, skews it based on strokes and colour spots guided more by instinct than by eye and reason. Layer on layer, with different densities and textures provided by the brush, he ends up eliminating the initial drawing by seeking to make the form appear from the gesture.  That gesture is important and moves around the drawing, edging it; it establishes a set of solid forms that clash, are overlaid and crisscross each other, sometimes seeking harmony and at other times conflict.  The outcome is ultimately large areas of colour that vibrate on their edges.  Coca strives for painting to be an occurrence, a fact; something that can directly impact the nervous system.  Only then does drawing sustain painting, and painting edge drawing.

THE PUBLICATION

A monograph on the artist is being published to mark the exhibition; it features the latest output of the artist, all of which was produced during his year’s residency at the BilbaoArte artistic production centre. Drawings and oil paintings that, overall, are a compendium of the way that the artist approaches contemporary painting.  Along with visits to the exhibition at the Sala de URIBITARTE40, the book includes a text by Jaime Cuenca – PhD in Human and Social Sciences and Graduate in Philosophy –, where Coca’s work is analysed from the theoretical sphere.

The book has been designed by FFraca (design office), www.ffraca.com, and will be available free of charge at the exhibition venue from 24 October.  The presentation of the book will take place at 7.00 p.m. on 7 November as part of the programmes for the general public being run alongside the exhibition project.

Gabriel Coca, artist
Pamplona, 1989

Master’s degree in Painting from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and graduate in Art and Design from the Escola Massana of Barcelona. Coca completed artist residencies at the Arteleku production centre (San Sebastián) and at the Huarte Contemporary Art Centre (Navarra).  He was awarded the Navarra Government’s visual and plastic art production grants in 2021. His work has been exhibited at cultural centres and galleries, including CACH (Navarra), SC Gallery (Bilbao), Galería Altxerri (Donostia-San Sebastián), the Basauri Cultural Centre (Bizkaia) and Sala Parés (Barcelona). Coca has also exhibited at fairs of the ilk of FIG Bilbao and UVNT Art Fair (Madrid). His work can be found in collections including those of DKV, Agefred and the BilbaoArte Foundation

The artistic practice of Gabriel Coca (Pamplona, 1989) focuses on researching the properties of paint and is a reflection on the possibilities of the medium itself.  The artist consider painting to be a gesture, an act driven by a wish, a wish to see something, that something that still does not exist. Making visible that force that takes shape through the material, colour and brushstroke.

The pictorial space is established by a set of multiple coats of paint that overlap and deny or affirm each other. He consider the picture to be a place, painting as an image of a captured moment, a material present.

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