Strong Upper and Downer (Ignacio Uriarte)

29/10/2019

As part of the series "if paintings talked" ("si los cuadros hablaran"), today we look at the work Strong Upper and Downer by Ignacio Uriarte. This piece is composed of 24 sheets of paper featuring a weave of typed elements which, as the spectator gets closer, can be recognised as percentage symbols. While the black ones follow an ascending trend, the red ones descend – in clear and direct reference to the stock markets, where red numbers usually represent losses.

In Ignacio Uriarte's work, in the words of Joanna Kleinberg, "the visual effects … are complex, but the language is plain: lines, colours and clean surfaces". In some cases, his works refer to the reflections of Op art, always with a pristine but manual execution, avoiding technical aids that would facilitate the outcome.

In this piece, once again, Uriarte takes the iconography of the business world and, once again, the measure of time is represented in each of those percentage signs that signify share prices, fixed observation points of a price.