‘Panel de control’ is an exhibition project born out of a proposal for pictorial research focussing on fragmented painting and its results.

We start by drawing a one-way road at the beginning of the  project,  which  has spoken to us about cutting and clipping since the beginning, and how, bit by bit, this project has come to life to become what we will call the Control Panel, thus turning its working prototype towards a new stream of pictorial research.

The above consideration of the primary idea regarding its execution concludes by saying that in order to address a personal painting, we must make decisions that will influence the development of the work. We are referring to how to have an idea, how to develop it and how to address it, always choosing painting as the medium of expression.

In this project, the aim is to emphasise and to not forget the character of the painting, where colour may show its artificial nature just as Impressionists do, given that colour is a tightrope element, a space midway between the image and the painting. Everything is simplified with the aim of arriving at the painting.

Understanding painting from an inside view, like Matisse in what he called ‘Drawing with Scissors’, was an aesthetic revolution for its time that has had an impact to this day. To this end, cutting or clipping will always be present, whether as a fissure, mutilation, smudge, parenthesis or discord. Therefore, the objective of this project is not programmed, but it is rather a sequence of the gradual struggle of art for independence. The painting must not show beyond itself, the painting itself is the work. The painting will not be at the service of other causes; as such, the key is to draw from the surface of these paintings and not from within them, as well as thinking about each decision starting with the most essential, the choice of painting itself as a medium.

The practice of painting in this project, in addition to the reflection that it logically implies, involves other matters such as fragmentation, hybridisation and confrontation, resulting in art that is critical, reflective and cognitive.

It is a multifocal project to which the public applies the connotations. It is the latter who decides and thinks about the work, wherein perceptions are as subjective as the experience itself before the object. It is inevitable that the spectator will make associations and will introduce associations that were not planned or intended by the creator-artist, at least consciously, but which are likely to develop through the artwork.

The exhibition catalogue features an essay by Sema D'Acosta ‘Pintar como una presa hidroeléctrica produce electricidad’ (Painting like a hydroelectric dam produces electricity) [Process and assembly of the work by Ana Barriga Oliva].