Crossing borders focuses on the concept of borders, boundaries, or frontier territories that permeate our relationship with the geographical environment, from the closest, such as the boundary with a neighbour’s land, to state borders, etc., and which often coincide with geographical features such as mountain ranges, rivers and coastlines, as well as in other areas such as the social sphere, the human psyche and art, among others.

In studying and reflecting on this concept, the artist delves into geographical and creative spaces that meet the conditions of a border in its broadest sense, seeking to overcome the limits within which he currently develops his artistic practice, expanding it, either through hybridisation with other media, images, etc. that can contribute new languages or different approaches to his body of work. In addition to working in different techniques such as painting, photography and graphic work on two-dimensional supports, Villena seeks to overcome the frame as an element of demarcation of the pictorial space. With the intention of bringing it closer to an installation environment, he combines it with audio files, videos, structures built with slats, bamboo, elements found in his travels, etc., thus giving rise to a re-contextualisation of his work.

Fernando Villena (Bilbao, 1974). Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country – E.H.U., and Professional Master’s Degree in Painting. UPV-EHU (2016). His work is based on the search for and understanding of different organic spatial planes, extracted from everyday realities and transformed into an abstract and photographic pictorial reality that brings together their essence. The act of moving and interacting with a new environment, in search of certain elements, involves physical movement that in turn generates intellectual thought, both on an everyday and artistic level. His starting point is the experience of nature and its interrelation with human beings. Through computer-manipulated photographic images, the canvas becomes a meeting place for these different planes of pictorial and photographic reality. He uses the camera to attract and blur elements of the environment; to turn figures into objects of no individual importance; to transform the background landscape into the main protagonist of the foreground, and ultimately, to change its meaning. Large objects become tiny, and microscopic spaces are amplified as if we were observing them through a large lens.