Javier Albar Mansoa's Profile

From: Spain
Joined: November 02, 2007
http://www.flickr.com/photos/javier_albar/

About JAVIERALBARMANSOA:

Javier Albar (1969) discovers Xylography at the Brita Prinz Gallery workshops, a technique which allows him to make the transition from architectural to graphic design. In xylography he finds the freedom of expression that he needed.
This transition makes him work the wood in a different way, designing and drawing the images as though they were architectural plans on transparent paper, transfering afterwards to the wood. This technique makes him experiment xylography in another way achieving different results.

Albar uses xylography as a base for his graphic work, using ‘okumen’ wood as the main support and the use of sharp razors, cutting the wood with quite a good precision. By overlaying pieces on his compositions and playing with transparencies of the inks, he establishes defined areas by the drawings, creating compositing puzzles in a constant search for lightness, space observation and a sense of game playing whilst interpreting his work. Albar is constantly seeking an evolving experimentation in his work, and he starts to incorporate new techniques combined with xylography, such as lithography and more recently the matrix of a type of plastic named Arraglás, playing with new resources such as the sanded circles, and the atmospheric scratched backgrounds.

The utilization of black ink on the white paper with the rotundity of the linear cut of the wood, produces a great rotundity and strength in his work . The author plays with the superimposition of the white ink, and its transparencies on the black to create different shades of bluish grey which at times, are combined with little disperse touches of colour, or degraded tonalities such as orange, reds, greens and yellows, which are embraced or placed within the black ink without touching one another. White lines from the paper play, connect, delimit and draw a magical and engaging space.

Javier Albar's poetic refers to an organic, geometric and technological abstraction which blend with each other through a synthetic and formalist version. Albar’s work comprises a whole world of references which are more or less subtle, such as ‘architectural deconstruction‘, technology, the structural engineering, the futurist cinema, the urban maps, the aerial views of the city lights at night, and natural elements such as water, snow, stones and plants, amongst others. The osseous structures of animal and fossil skeletons of dinosaurs are mixed in unbalanced compositions, full of tensions and linear secret connections. Albar uses the circle as a transition between the organic and the geometric. A geometry which does not follow a mathematical calculation, but an intuitive and emotional use by the artist.