Julen García Muela


Curated by Gema Intxausti, the HARRIAK program has opened another exhibition in Agurain, at Zabalarte Etxea. The exhibition features works by María Cascón, Jon Ibala, and Mar Torre.

María Cascón. In her photo booths we find pure frontality. A large group of portraits—some repeated and scattered—look at us and turn their backs on us. Faces upon faces among which we know we will not find ourselves, reminding us of the power of the image to include and exclude. It’s easy to think of Gema Intxausti’s photo booths, where the artist manipulates the medium from within, exploring its performative and representational possibilities. In María’s work, the approach seems opposite: the image is not questioned through the object, but through intention. By forcing an unprejudiced naïveté, free from cynicism and irony, the act of filling the room with these portraits becomes an invitation to a radical acceptance of life: this is what there is—enjoy it.

Jon Ibala. His paintings are built in layers: intense colors and contrasts, gradients contained within geometric forms, spaces suggested through textures or naïve figurative elements. A process reminiscent of Damaris Pan’s painting. Two works that turn their backs on each other atop wooden pillars deviate from this approach. On the front, a blurred bust gazes disdainfully at something that has just happened to our left, while smoking. On the back, a twisted, submissive green figure receives the impact of crossed blue brushstrokes and reveals its organs.

Mar Torre. Imagen 38, who until now had used an aging pseudonym (Imagen 29, Imagen 31…), presents herself for the first time under her real name, in a gesture of self-revelation reminiscent of Martin Margiela. The same happens in her sculptures: by systematically folding photographs printed on sheets of paper, she always leaves something behind, suggesting that what is visible is always marked by what remains hidden.
These sculptures unfold a generic imaginary: selfies, landscapes, interiors, streets… creating a latent, low-intensity, lo-fi aesthetic that becomes iconoclastic. In them, the iconic holds the same value as a black ink stain or the paper’s edge, present as a geometric frame.
Nothing dominates anything else, and the subtle gesture of leaving a sheet on a chair or a table is amplified through repetition. Thus, these small, resting worlds acquire the quality of a horizon—one that looks at itself while being looked at. Autonomous, they present fragments of a life that seems predestined to arrange itself. They turn the everyday into an out-of-focus exercise of individual style. Like Mar-tin Mar-giela, or Imagen 38.

 

 

90 km aho-zirika
María Cascón, Jon Ibala and Mar Torre
From July 5 to 31, 2025
Zabalarte Etxea

Mediator: Gema Intxausti