Exhibitions
María Villacorta: dialogue between early rock art and contemporary art
The Albert I Cave Art Center in Puente Viesgo presents the exhibition "Time and Depth" by artist María Villacorta from November 13 to 30. Curated by Miriam Callejo, the exhibition proposes a fascinating dialogue between prehistory and contemporary art, exploring how the memory of the past and current aesthetic pursuits intertwine.
The exhibition marks a historic milestone, becoming the first contemporary art exhibition at this center, with the aim of establishing a dialogue between the ancestral art of our caves, a World Heritage Site, and young, innovative talent. The exhibition brings together nearly fifty pieces, including paintings and sculptures, that explore the delicate connection between past and present. Villacorta uses materials such as recycled iron, a constant in his work, and different types of paper, where the passage of time becomes a creative ingredient that imprints each piece with a vivid and sensitive memory.
María Villacorta: Between stars and pollen 9, 2019.
For Villacorta, the exhibition constitutes a journey between two landscapes: the lithic landscape, formed by rocks that function as guardians of time and witnesses of wars and erosion, and the anthropological landscape, where human action wears away the stone in a constant cycle of civilizational creation and destruction. As the artist herself notes: "This group of works is the result of looking at the landscape, its erosion […] in the savage process of creation and destruction of civilizations." Beyond the merely aesthetic, the exhibition presents itself as a true archaeology of consciousness, inviting the viewer to reflect on the imprint of time and the interaction between nature and civilization.
Along with the paintings on paper, Villacorta presents sculptures made from recycled metals, whose intervention transforms the material to give it a lithic texture, evoking the rock surfaces that remain as witnesses and bridges between us and our ancestors, connecting space and time in a profound and timeless dialogue.
Villacorta's work connects distant eras, fusing contemporary techniques with ancestral symbols, and establishes a bridge between past and present that transcends the purely visual. His works invite us to contemplate memory as a shared territory, where nature, humanity, and time intertwine in a silent yet profound dialogue. Each piece acts as a reminder that our present does not exist in isolation, but is inherited from landscapes, materials, and gestures that precede us, offering the viewer the opportunity to reflect on the continuity of the creative impulse and the imprint of history on our daily experience.
