Oriol Aribau
Barcelona, 1984
Aribau is a sculptor whose work interrogates the (re-)interpretation of space. His approach is based on the observation of space as the locus of creation, in which he works with both physical poetry and the materials themselves.
His conceptual maps arise out of landscape-based observation, as well as memory, both personal and collective. His imagery flows from the everyday. The materials and forms of the contemporary city are his work’s clear point of reference. Aribau’s urban cartographies investigate the dichotomy of empty and occupied spaces, at times generating new spaces of their own. Composition and decomposition play the same role.
“For his installations, Oriol Aribau brings to light the partitions and volumes produced by architecture. The constructions, objects and spaces that make up the city are imperceptibly linked to each other, and it is precisely this link that explores the artist’s work. Architecture, its forms and its materials constitute the privileged source of inspiration for a course of artistic creation. […]. ”
Jean-Charles Hameau, Conservateur du patrimoine
Musée national Adrien Dubouché, Limoges
The imprints of the artist’s personal landscape become cartographies of his memory; they are intimate and personal views that provoke a dialogue between the subject and the space that, in a way, evokes everyday life. Aribau talks about how landscape architectures affect us and highlights the space-individual relationship. Individual behaviors in relation to the environment are diverse and friction the relationships between content and container. Their intimate landscapes then play in reverse and generate containers to reach the content. It is a deconstruction of elements that generate new forms. Spaces lived, forgotten, left, future or even dead make up the artist’s own language from a sensitivity of the place and memories. The environmental poetics of Aribau despite having a personal symbolism evokes the viewer to contradictory sensations, and as a type of eternal return refers to the individual imagination.
Exhibitions
About the abscence / 2018
Oriol Aribau works mainly on paper and through sculpture, and takes as his primary sources both architecture and the city. His raw material, his main working tool, is the openly accessible built space of the city, with which the artist interacts on a daily basis.
Editions
About the abscence
Oriol Aribau’s book, designed and published by Vilaseco Editions, with images and texts by Oriol Aribau.