The first step was going to the studio one day, cutting and gluing three bits of wood and leaving. I didn’t return until the next day, so that the glue would be well dry before continuing. Each time I added more parts, and the object grew day by day. Then I divided it into two and continued working on each part, and later in turn dividing them too. All the new sculptures presented here came about from that same point of origin that kept expanding, and they openly display the traces of the process, based on a succession of daily decisions. The surface exposes the inner structure, made up of layers of wood and paper paste, and you can also intuit the time that must have elapsed in the studio from the beginning until each work was considered finished. On the other hand, the veins of the wood add more layers to the already tangled mesh of sediments, and also speak of the process of growth of the pine tree from which they came. As such, both this series of sculptures and the exhibition itself are called Incidencia acumulada (Accumulated Incidence). It is the accumulation of many actions, accidents, disappointments and surprises.

The term also resonates in our recent memory, because ‘incidence’ was one of those pieces of data used to justify lockdowns, travel restrictions, COVID digital certs and face masks. We have lived through a period in which decisions based on graphics and statistics have marked our everyday lives, and this is the reason why some of the sculptures have forms that recall X and Y axes, or they include rules, as if they wished to measure the development of forms in space.

The series of small collages Incauto-Inteligente-Estúpido-Malvado (Helpless-Intelligent-Stupid-Bandits) is likewise based on the template for the diagram devised by the Italian historian Carlo M. Cipolla. He presented it for the first time in a humorous essay called The Basic laws of Human Stupidity, which was initially circulated solely among friends, but ended up being published widely and translated into several languages. The graph represents how the interaction between two people is based on the naivety, intelligence, stupidity or evil of both parties. It is an ironical proposal because a graph can represent what is quantifiable or measurable but not what is qualitative. The complexity of human relationships or of life itself cannot be translated to such simple schema. Hairs and traces of ink, glue and paint defy order or measurement along an axis, and play along with Cipolla’s joke.

The show is rounded off with San Sebastián (doce) (San Sebastian [Twelve]), a work from 2021, produced for the one-person show San Sebastián y el fantasma (San Sebastián and the Ghost) at Museo San Telmo de Donostia-San Sebastián. This piece has points of connection with the other works on view, both in the layered construction as well as the patterns drawn on the surface.