Material Voices

SUSANA TALAYERO: UN FONDO BLANCO QUE NUNCA ESTUVO LIMPIO

by

05/05/2025 18:30

Susana Talayero: 4 cani per strada (1990). Detail.

SUSANA TALAYERO: UN FONDO BLANCO QUE NUNCA ESTUVO LIMPIO
Exhibition open to the public:
Thursday to Saturday, 5 May – 14 June, 2025.
From 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm.

SUSANA TALAYERO: UN FONDO BLANCO QUE NUNCA ESTUVO LIMPIO
Revisiting, remaking. Moving things. 1986-1987-1988-1989-1990-1991-1992-1993-1994-1995-1996, Rome. Alla Romana infrahistory: without a program, experimenting, foreigners, undergrounds, squares. Paint, making a way of life, making life worlds.

At Bulegoa z/b I present the paintings Equilibrio precario (1988), 4 cani per strada (1991) and the drawings Retratos (1991), all of which were made in two studios loaned to me in Rome: a ruined building and the basement of a palazzo. I also present the video Un taglio nello spazio (2024), an intersection between my own photographic archive and two actions which I carried out – in 2021 and 2023 – in that place of initiation and memory: Rome. 

Making it possible to listen to the crude and euphoric logic of the material; working with the archive, altering it; playing that this world exists, resisting. 

Susana Talayero (Bilbao, 1961) After graduating in Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), she moved to Rome, where she lived for 10 years. After returning to Bilbao in 1996,   her work in the field of painting and drawing was extended to making video experiments. Her current practice explores the relation between painting and space through large-scale accumulative montages. In 3 acciones corsarias, a work in progress, she explores the relation between painting, the body and locations linked to her autobiography in Rome. Her recent shows include: Meteora (2024) at CarrerasMugica, Bilbao; Relatos de entrenamiento at CAB, Burgos (2018); Una certa organizzazione delle cose, at AOC F58, Rome (2017) and Crónica inquieta 1986-2016, at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum (2016). In 2023, she received the Gure Artea prize in recognition of her artistic career.

The show Un fondo blanco que nunca estuvo limpio (A white background that was never clean) is presented as part of Una certa Roma, the eighth session of Material Voices: Feminist genealogies of the work of making exhibitions.