“Beñat´s paintings seem like maps of unknown territories, landscapes and mountains of his mind constructed by linear and gestural forms that delineate alien topographies”
Alex Virji

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ARTIST STATEMENT
Nervous pencil lines, thick acrylic paint, dirt and charcoal enable Beñat to offer linear and interstitial spaces of his mind, traces of intimate moments of time and space which refuse representation by escaping visual description and verbal fixation.

With works that are expressive of the process of making them and operate at an emotional level rather than through meaning and/or through representational content, his approach could be described as the doing the mark-making rather than the mark-making itself.

Beñat constructs pieces that are aesthetically self-sufficient and true to his logic and visual language whilst presents unsureness, unspecificity and incompleteness in meaning. These are pieces open to multiple interpretations which do not demand understanding from its audience although can generate an experience, an exchange from the encounter which could be a place to generate feelings.

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BIOGRAPHY
Originally from the Basque country in Northern Spain, Beñat Olaberria is a London based artist graduated from City and Guilds from London Art School with an MA in Fine Art. With a non impressionistic, non narrative and non reductive approach to making Beñat´s practice explores the unknown territories of his mind.

Like in an unplanned walk, he is interested in constructing abstract pieces as a reaction to his first nervous, unplanned and impulsive mark-making until the desired balance is achieved though his visual logic and personal language.

Beñat has participated in numerous group exhibitions around the UK and his work can be found in private collections across Europe and USA. He is currently focused on his first solo shows in Barcelona and Switzerland.