Text by Javier Peñafiel
The Truce | 2017 | Oil, acrylic and collage on linen | 89 x 162 cm
The war
The war when painted is not two-tone, despite all the ashes.
It would be pointless to describe what goes on in Idoia’s paintings. There are no voids, they are full. They are not for those who specialize in big audiences, they work on a one to one level, in a collaborative confrontation with the viewer.
These paintings refuse to act as case studies. This is Idoia’s way of thinking and she acts accordingly.
When you see a work by Idoia Montón, whether it be in a squat like KM, Mountain House in Barcelona or in a gallery, such as Carreras Mujica, to mention two polar opposite spaces where she has exhibited, the works in some ways dismiss the spaces which contain them. Both the white cube and the black cube evaporate because Idoia’s paintings don’t live off something neutral, but off specifics, they don’t talk about themselves nor do they exert endogamy.
Idoia doesn’t collaborate with the pedagogical cynicism which abounds in art institutions, though it’s not an intellectual decision, it’s just NO. NO, There’s no need for a self-help manual to say why it’s difficult to say it, it’s just no. Because her NO never denies anyone anything, Idoia’s generosity as an artist is phobia-proof.
When we, two or more of us, began frequenting art institutions, the scene was built on an uncritical intention to populate the institutional construction heap of the Spanish state. We preferred not to attend, but to develop more minor wisdoms. Far from the successes of the genitalitary we would draw intensely, defuse the bipolarities and intentionally divert our attention from the established norm.
The Spears | 2016 | Oil, acrylic and collage on paper | 75 x 100 cm
What’s best about Idoia’s work for me is that I can never remember it clearly, I always have to go back and look again. What happens between Idoia and me is a kind of victimless Alzheimers.
The surprise is a blow, and not a soft one.
There’s an Agonist in many of Idoia Montón`s paintings that wear the mask of Telemachus who has forever been in a belligerent war with the snobbish Narcissus, Electra, Cassandra, Oedipus, with his parents’ Melodrama and Lance in Hand, the nation-addict, twin and collaborator of the aforenamed.
In post-diagnostic painting to wait is not a synonym of to hold back, these are war paintings despite being anti-cosmetic, and their foresight is a social dictum: “Quantity will do it” the crowd says to the oil paint.
The cinemas program films whose color has faded. Idoia’s painting depicts in colour the war pains we all know, and not only our species (human or hyper-human).
Primitive accumulation | 2015 | Oil, acrylic and collage on linen | 73 x 60 cm
Trojan Horse | 2015 | Oil, acrylic and collage on linen | 55 x 38 cm
Editor's Note: Revised by author. Original text published in www.ajoblanco.org/blog/la-guerra-de-idoia-monton (2017)