Gabriel Corcuera Zubillaga Artist

"Hide & Speak"

HOW OFTEN is it that an image can pinpoint and rekindle an important moment in the past. Instantly on looking at Gabriel Corcuera Zubillaga's work. I was reminded of one vignette from so many years ago. Battling with "To the lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf I came accross a passage which obviously made a definite mark on my memory. Two children are arguing over the presence of an animal skull in their bedroom. One is fascinated by it and wants to keep it. The other, terrified by it, refuses to sleep. The mother's solution? To drape it with her shawl, so that although it is there - it is not.

Zubillaga's paintings deal intimately with exposure and concealment. Full, unashamed and sensually aware nudes are his subject and his inspiration. He instils in each, a sense of mystery and more pointedly, unease, by smothering the face in dark cascading locks, imprisioning it behind the bars of fingers or adorning it with a skull - the perfect and universal Memento Mori. Thus covered, their nudity becomes secondary> The anonymity that facial concealment lends means that inevitably, we can do no other but to think of these works as representations of us all - intimate portraits- naked, stripped to nothing, sacrificial and sensual. Ultimately vulnerable, with an all-pervading mood of waiting.

The sanctity and innocenece of the exposed flesh is at the same time, alluring and alarming. We are both the voyeur and victim.

                                                                         ROBIN DUTT
                                                                         Author

                                                                         May 1998 London