Carlos Irijalba [Pamplona, 1979] former resident at the Rijksakademie of Amsterdam 2013/2014, Graduated at the Basque Country University and UDK Berlin en 2004. Awarded with the Guggenheim Bilbao Photography Grant in 2003 and the Marcelino Botín Art Grant in 2007/08. He has also received the Purificacion Garcia photography first Prize and the Revelation PhotoEspaña Prize among others. Irijalba has exhibited at international Art Museums, including Herzliya Museum Israel, MUMA Melbourne or LMCC Nueva York, and in other cities like Berlin, Chicago, London, Japan, Paris or Beijing.
Irijalba is present in collections as Sammlung Wemhoener Foundation, Taviloglu Art Collection Istanbul. In Spain, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Museo ARTIUM de Arte Contemporáneo de Vitoria, Fundación Coca Cola, Museo Patio Herreriano de Valladolid, CA2M Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo de Madrid, Museo de Navarra or Fundación Marcelino Botín.
His work analyses the way in which the Western paradigm recreates an abstract medium that loses all relation except to itself. The spectacle has drawn a blueprint of the visible for easy digestion, transferring attention to a series of pseudo-events.
Irijalba’s work is driven by the principle of pertinence, the necessary or superfluous character of an object to cohabit the existing world. The drive to be selective and responsible for the objects we secrete, as sometimes silence or void is the best contribution. From that position the work focuses on the potential relation of object, image or installation to activate the places they inhabit and react towards an existing environment using human space-time scale as the measure to understand the world. The work reacts to the relative experience of time, space and the fictional construction of the territory. Here, geological tempo, natural and manmade cycles are crucial to position our dimension to enhance the criticality of the very current moment.