About the work 

Irazu’s most recent work began with assemblages of wood blocks, cast aluminium forms, and cardboard boxes, painted and nailed together in geometric piles, balanced on ladders, or hung on the wall. Here, Irazu plays with textures and surfaces, as aluminium is painted to look like wood, or cardboard is coated in resin, leading to a sense of uncertainly within the viewer, for whom the constituent parts of the work remain deliberately unclear.

In his photographs of these sculptures, the camera is used as a flattening device, disrupting the space of the studio. Adding to the visual confusion, the artist includes strips of acrylic paint that often resemble wood grain, making the distinction of the foreground and the background difficult; the painted surface and the photograph. Working at the intersection of sculpture, painting, and photography, Irazu’s work ultimately leads us to question our perception of illusion and reality.

For his Whitechapel Gallery Edition, the subject is a sculpture in progress in the studio space. The title of the edition 'Haizea', meaning 'wind' in Basque language, is also the title of the unfinished sculpture, which is built from left-over materials, to form a new work. Printed onto a high gloss paper, Irazu has isolated some of the materials and surfaces from the image, printing them in a matt silkscreen ink, Like his painted photographs, these contrasting elements reinforce the struggle between the depth of the image and the flatness of the surface,  creating an almost sculptural interplay between subject, surface and background colour.

About the artist

Spanish artist Pello Irazu, known for his sculptural works, is considered one of the key figures in the renewal of Spanish sculpture since the beginning of his career in the 1980’s. Since the early 2000’s he has integrated photography into his practice, pressing on the distinction between two and three dimensionality in an effort to blur the boundaries that traditionally separate artistic genres. Irazu is interested in exploring the complex relationship between the viewer’s body, the artwork, and the space they both inhabit. 

Selected Exhibitions

Irazu’s work has been exhibited in many major institutions including the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; Moscow Museum of Modern Art; Joan Miro Foundation, Barcelona; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and Bass Museum of Art, Florida. Public collections that feature his work include Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona (MACBA); Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; La Caixa Foundation, Barcelona; Museum of Modern Art, Vienna (mumok); and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago.