PRESENTATION OF THE EXIBITION CATALOGUE 'ALMUDENA FERNÁNDEZ FARIÑA. PISANDO CHARCOS'

The catalogue of the exhibition Almdena Fernández Fariña. Pisando charcos, held in the CGAC from July to September 2023, offers a complete review of the career of the artist from Vigo, who stands out above all for her contribution to the understanding of painting as a permeable genre whose potential to dialogue with the context is multiplied depending on its capacity to expand beyond the frame.

Significant contributions to this re-evaluation and re-contextualisation work have been made by Susana Cendán, curator of the exhibition; Patricia Mayayo, art historian, teacher and researcher; and Miren Doiz, an artist from Navarra with whom Fernández Fariña engages in a suggestive dialogue about the limits and challenges of painting.

Regarding its design, this publication is an object bursting with details that aims not only to showcase the work of Fernández Fariña but also to embody her personality. Inspired in the object-books created by the artist, whose morphology often challenges their raison d'être, it is revealed as an uncomfortable artefact, an element that escapes the norm and resists occupying the space that is its own.

Almudena Fernández Fariña has been fully involved in creating the book. The cover, for example, is the result of a direct intervention, replicating the mural painting, Flor y acanto, carried out in situ by the artist in the CGAC hall. If her work interacted with that of the Portuguese Álvaro Siza Vieira, transforming space through painting, the book’s cover plays with vertices and planes to construct an artefact in which the pure forms of modern architecture collide with that other ornamental, feminine tradition, often marginalised by modernity.

In addition to the artist’s input, the presentation also includes the participation of the museum director, Santiago Olmo, and the curator of her exhibition in the CGAC, Susana Cendán.

ALMUDENA FERNÁNDEZ FARIÑA (Vigo, Pontevedra, 1970) is an artist, doctor of fine arts and lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Pontevedra (University of Vigo). She studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts (1990-1995), the School of Art and Design of Limerick (1994) the École de Beaux Arts of Le Mans (1996-1997) and Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Salamanca (1997-1998).

Her artistic career began in the mid-nineties and, since then, she has participated in monographic exhibitions in various galleries, and her work is represented in many public and private collections. Her artistic work has been recognised with numerous awards and grants, among them the Premio de Pintura L’Oréal (2000); the Nuevos Valores Grant (1994) or the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2001). She carries out intense theoretical research in the field of contemporary painting and one of her most renowned publications is Pintura site (2014).