Arturo Sarramián,

A Beacon Towards the (Un)Known

Drawing—making Arturo Sarramián (Logroño, 1983) a perfect fit for the Gregorio Prieto Drawing Prize, which he won in its 26th edition with the piece Simulated Object, the starting point of this exhibition—is the technique that best defines this artist from La Rioja.

In his pursuit of a personal visual language, both in terms of technique and aesthetic interests—rooted in science fiction, neon lights, and brutalist architecture, with clear references to Hollywood productions like Blade Runner or Star Wars—Sarramián focuses on two main approaches.

On one hand, he reproduces discarded everyday objects, giving them a second life. He removes them entirely from their original context, strips them of any recognizable references, and grants them a new identity. By altering their scale—often making them much larger than their real-life counterparts—he gives them an imposing presence. A simple frying pan lid, enlarged, may resemble a flying saucer. The casing of a small household appliance may evoke the facade of a colossal building or the interior of a spacecraft. Electronic parts, industrial components, when grouped together, can appear as menacing totems of unidentified cultures.

It is not about reproducing the object as it fell into Sarramián’s hands—or mind—but rather about enhancing its visual potential, adding elements to achieve the results he envisions. Neutral backgrounds, devoid of any extraneous information, elevate his work to that of a scientific researcher, one who classifies and taxonomizes an idealized reality based on its structural forms. He places these forms onto what could be seen as petri dishes—now made of paper—immersing them in atmospheres that convey a sense of strangeness or mystery. It’s that fear of the unknown that science so often confronts.

On the other hand—and once again, scale plays a crucial role—his smaller format works point to similar destinations, though here the forms have no real-world references: these are purely mental drawings, born from an idea, an impulse, a fleeting sensation passing through the artist’s subconscious, swiftly transferred to paper without preliminary sketches. As a result, these works tend to feature simple shapes, organic structures, and minimal elements. However, in the natural evolution of the artist’s practice, some of these mental drawings are now beginning to shift in scale, to grow, and some of these new developments are being shown for the first time in this exhibition.

The audiovisual space within the gallery complements the show with several models Sarramián constructs from the objects he manipulates—models that he then photographs and uses as maps to navigate his paper surfaces—alongside a selection of his photographs and video projections that offer insights into his working methodology. The exhibition, titled System Exploration, thus becomes an invitation to enter the very mind of this draughtsman.

Armed with nothing more than pencil or charcoal, black and white, and the vast expressive possibilities of shadow, chiaroscuro, and varied pressure, this artist creates seductive universes—limitless in form and elusive in meaning. These are still lifes of the 21st century. His tools give rise to a sublime paradox: the same materials that once enabled the earliest cave dwellers to document their mystical earthly experiences now allow Arturo to speak of science, of technology, and of a future shaped by scientific progress.

Arturo’s work acts as a beacon that opens our eyes and warns us of the unchecked exploitation of resources and the rampant consumerism in which we are entangled. By bringing discarded objects to the foreground and transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary, the artist critiques planned obsolescence, elevates the falsely superfluous, and compels us to face our own share of responsibility in all of this.

Guadalajara, 16 February 2025