SCGallery proudly presents “Ejercicios para totalizar” (Exercises to sum up), Pablo Merchante’s (1979, Seville) first solo exhibition in this gallery.
This show is composed of several canvases of different sizes and a work on paper that stands out for being the exhibition’s starting point.
This is not an exhibition about romantic love, although it is also present. It is more about a love that encompasses all its forms, states, places and times: love for oneself, for painting, for those who accompany you, for those who listen to you, an undefined and, at the same time, very concrete love. In this exhibition, Pablo Merchante elegantly introduces the power of change motivated by painting and the condition of the painter, with all its emotional baggage and vital background. From this series of works derived from a single image, he invites us to stay as if we were inside a recurring thought with slight variations.
The works shown in “Ejercicios para totalizar” (Exercises to sum up) speak of a redistribution of pieces that belong to a much larger story of which a part is hidden from the viewer. In a way, it is like we sense that Zurbarán’s Agnus Dei (1635) is not a simple lamb, or that Félix González Torres’ bed (1991) is not any bed: these two works, separated in time, speak of love and death, from the sacred and the romantic level, respectively. This sensation of discovering something more is what has led Pablo Merchante to fall in love with this image and, now, to give it to us.
Eladio Aguilera.
