brillo abrigo
There are no eyes that inhabit that shine anymore. In fact, if it weren’t for the occasional flashlights of the researchers, it would no longer exist. That shine is the way water makes itself visible, and the preservation of the Altamira paintings largely depends on it. Paintings that are still damp, still fresh—that’s why they shine. The curious thing is that the same waters that keep them alive, that created their shelter by carving through the rock until it became habitable, and that protected them from the outside by collapsing their access, are also washing them away—erasing them and threatening their integrity. And in the balance of that shine lies the key.
The infiltration of external water and its movement into the limestone rock—typical of the karst system—are part of the processes that carry away the pigments of Altamira. The flow of water thus connects the outside landscape with the interior. And, in turn, it connects us with our ancestors, as today’s water is, despite all its transformations, the same as it was forty thousand years ago.
Altamira could be thought of as a shelter of paint—a shelter created by water, inhabited in harmony with its shines. A painting that protects and is connected to touch, to hands, to the texture of the surface, to the idea of skin and bark, but also to fluidity and something as intangible as shine itself. Holding onto the shine is impossible; it disappears the moment the surface dries. Finding other ways to make water visible once the shine is lost has been one of the driving forces of this project.
“brillo abrigo” is a site-specific work created entirely within the environment of Altamira, based on connecting two essential aspects of its paintings: the visible presence of water through movement and its potential to be understood as shelter or refuge, playing with the relationships between exterior and interior, threat and protection. A series of performative processes were carried out, inspired by the natural courses that shape and transform Altamira’s landscape—such as the transport of pigments through water. These processes were developed using materials inherent to the site, including local water and the oxide minerals present in its paintings. Only iron oxide minerals such as hematite, limonite, and manganese were used for the ochres, reds, and blacks. This work approaches painting and landscape as fluid processes, in constant motion and transformation, capable of dissolving different temporalities and shifting their nature at any given moment.
Installation views and documentation of the work by Carmen Verdú