Through different techniques and media, Concha Martínez Barreto delves into the past, not by attempting the impossible reconstruction of what is lost or an arid cataloging work, but as a task that precisely accounts for the difficulty of all remembrance, the importance of showing the fragments, the traces left by time.

THE NAMES

Polyptych of 12 pencil / paper drawings 119 x 89 cm each. 2014 – 2015.

The encounter with some old family photographs leads Concha Martinez Barreto to create The Names. This series is a polyptych of twelve pieces conceived as an intense reflection on themes already addressed: the fragility of memory and identity itself, intergenerational connections, death and oblivion. Meticulous and at the same time fragile drawings that serve to give an account of the effort to remember and the failure of that attempt. How the inherited memory is full of ellipses, questions and doubts.

But, at the same time that they speak of disappearance, they celebrate the joy that arises in the act of looking. It is the case of the small photographs to draw them, of scrutinizing these familiar yet strange images. Finally, images of that fleeting instant called life. My interest in this piece is not the drawing itself or the technique, but the time: the obsessive delay in the meticulous contemplation of those forgotten faces, to accompany them, to stop and look.

 Series S / T

Oil / linen. 40 x 50 cm. 2016 – 2017

Based on Concha’s interest in memory, she creates this series about identity, affections and the passage of time. Constructed from old photographs, these paintings become a kind of archive or family album. Likewise, the deformations, the differences in scale, or the impossible shadows show the seams of the gaze. How much there is of the impossible -of the dream, of fiction- in all remembrance. People who appeared in different photographs now live together in strange groups.

A scenario in which there is something that does not fit, showing not only the strangeness of the passage of time but also that which cannot be deciphered. They are images that speak of childhood and life, of the speed of passing time, of loneliness and the gestures with which we try to avoid it… And at the same time, of painting itself as an exercise in love, as if through it he was trying to keep together those lives that tend to move away from each other.