Space 1
CHESSBOARD CAPE
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS This large-format work is the only bullfighting piece in Project 15. Is it the rigidity of a chessboard shaping the working cape, or rather the cape in motion that knows how to bend a chessboard? Is the matador disintegrating, or completing himself as he performs this artistic pass? The colour of this bullfighter's suit of lights – champagne, cream, lemon, old gold, straw, ochre, canary, hazel, wafer and the classic cane-and-gold – is a challenge in itself. The masterful movement leaves no doubt as to where the invisible bull stands. Uta's decision to paint the bullfighter's feet, perfectly aligned, on a square of grass floating above a fragile, semi-transparent staircase interprets a state of utmost concentration: the bullfighter's essential disconnection from everything that does not concern his dance with death.
URBAN - LANDSCAPE III
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS The interpretation of a landscape dominated by an empty open space. A yellow excavator stands on the horizontal division of the canvas. As if to counterbalance this machine, the outlines of a somewhat abandoned-looking house open up, embedded in the dominant lines of a work that conveys great depth thanks to a strong perspective.
DEAD OF TURTLE
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS With this work the artist concludes the PROJECT 15 series, for its presentation in an exhibition entitled FENIX in September 2021. Behind this canvas lies the artist's promise to her daughter to paint the girl's little tortoise, which had died suddenly. To do so, Uta builds an upside-down world, as inexplicable as the death of the small pet. A tortoise in green tones, swimming and facing the viewer, dominates the centre of the work. Turning to the left, as if about to fly, is the second tortoise, in strong tones, not facing the viewer. The third, still very small, portrays the lost tortoise heading upwards towards a blue Mediterranean sky. To emphasise this surreal world, both true and deceptive, the painter depicts a bird, a kingfisher under water, catching a fish which in turn faces the image of its own death. The bezel of a watch, a hinted metronome, little boats… symbols of the inevitable passing of time, the piercing noise of the fleeting present, which becomes our past the very instant we touch it.
TASTY
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS The largest-format work in the series and a key piece for its high degree of complexity, surrealism and impact. With TASTY, Uta aims to open a dialogue, a discussion, about the importance of our trust, or lack of it, in what we eat. A giant hamburger floats on a calm, deep sea. A syringe loaded with Bitcoins and Satoshis can inject or extract the benefits of an icon of modern food. A diagram explaining the difference between a bit and a quantum bit is hidden beneath the grey shell of an unknown planet. The yolk of an egg that gives this fast food its juiciness begins to drain away, dripping into a giant shell, which can be read as a nod to Botticelli's masterpiece “The Birth of Venus”. The egg as a symbol of origin, of being, the perfect microcosm, the universal symbol of the mystery of the creation of the world, forms the epicentre of this canvas. Its yolk dissolves and turns into sand, the symbol of fleeting time that cannot be kept in the drawer of a black-and-white column. The sand gathers inside a fragile hourglass. Understanding, appreciating and making the most of the present should be the target of our approach to life. The mystery of a metamorphosis that requires a temporary death in order to be reborn with unsurpassable beauty. A hinted skull, underwater stairs and precipices, the doom that threatens our eternal struggle to find the meaning of our life. A work of maximum visual impact and depth of meaning.
WOOD AND TIDE - LANDSCAPE IV
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS This work was inspired by a photograph the artist took at one of the ponds of the Sanlúcar salt flats. The challenge the artist set herself was to capture a subject she had never worked on before, with a very limited colour palette and a perspective that demands a high degree of abstraction. With the mastery she has achieved, the painter creates a work that is completely atypical and yet completely true to her style.
LOL DOLLS
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS A challenge of maximum contrast in black and white, on a square canvas divided into 16 squares, a play of shadows and polka dots. On this chessboard the artist places her daughter's colourful, modern doll collection.
WAITING
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS In vertical format, toys from different generations. On the left, in deep shadow, the puppet of a white-haired clown looking away, and a second clown with a melancholy expression and an awkward pose. Both dolls belong to the childhood memories of the artist, who was inspired to paint this work at a time that coincides with her daughter's childhood. The centre of the canvas is empty, a blank division between times past and the present, the latter represented by two of the artist's daughter's toys, a LOL doll and a Rubik's cube. A fragile glass full of coloured pencils seems lost somewhere between the times.
YOUNG LADIES
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS With this work Uta Geub paints a portrait of her daughter's paternal grandmother. It is based on a somewhat blurred black-and-white photograph from the early twentieth century showing the grandmother in the foreground with some friends. This canvas is considered another key work of PROJECT 15 and proof of the mastery the artist has achieved. With the utmost rigour she renders the perspective, integrating a complex surreal play of shapes and volumes. The vivid colours, set in strong contrast to one another to capture the play of light and shadow on the young ladies' faces, completely defy the rules of portraiture.
VERSATILE DOLLS
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS Five dolls belonging to the artist's daughter, on a background of black and white squares in a folded alignment. Clearly, the painter wants to encourage us to forget the rules of a conventional approach. Not only the very fact of a multiple, extravagant portrait of toys, but also the possibility of reading this work as both a vertical and a horizontal painting at the same time, is a clear manifesto of Uta's intention to abandon the rules of how one should paint and how one should look at a work.
GOATS
ACRYLIC AND GOLD LEAF ON CANVAS This animal holds a special fascination for the artist. The work brings together Uta's most recent approach and technique. “GOATS” is the first canvas of several works the artist plans to create on this subject.
CAUGHT FISH
ACRYLIC AND GOLD LEAF ON CANVAS This still life was inspired by the main course of a lunch in the artist's studio. With an unmistakable, very contemporary colour palette and the use of gold leaf, she depicts the fish, a sea bream, fresh out of the oven. A broken glass interrupts the clear view of the fish. The background of the work is a surreal landscape that suggests, once again, the chessboard, the infinite blue of the sky, the porcelain plate. This work invites you to take a stroll into its depths.
RACES ZERO
PENCIL AND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS This equestrian subject, horse racing, recreates scenes from the races held every August on the beaches of Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Wishing to renew her own vision, the artist begins this work by laying down its skeleton in pencil. Exhibiting an unfinished, bare work, still in progress, lets the viewer enter, in a way, the intimacy of the studio.
DEAD CAT VERSATIL ALIVE (2 of 18)
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS The same cat, the same expression, the same gesture. The colour palette changes, and that is decisive: a brightly coloured cat yawning, relaxed. Turning the work 90° anticlockwise reveals a screaming cat, fighting between life and death.
ATOMIC SUNSET (3 of 18)
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS With a penetrating, two-coloured gaze and a relaxed expression. Cat 3 lives each moment consciously, at peace with pleasure and pain, with the present and eternity, at peace with life and death.
GUESS WHAT (4 of 18)
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS The title of number 4 of 18 invites you to guess: to find the key to the thought guiding the mind of this cat, visible in parts, living beneath the surface of its own skull.
TOO ATOMIC (5 of 18)
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS A red cat with an expression of wisdom before the shop window of its possible end. Whether or not it dies as a consequence of the decision that Erwin Schrödinger's photon did or did not make.
REFLEXING (6 of 18)
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS Number six is inspired by cats' innate righting reflex. A young cat in free fall, pierced or held up by the atomic symbol, the black hole that spits out or absorbs. It is all a matter of point of view.
GRAVI WAVES (7 of 18)
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS Challenge: the focus on gravitational waves. The distortion of space-time as the pacemaker of the EPR paradox.
MAGNETICAT (13 of 18)
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS Magnetism that binds the energy of a thought to its corresponding circumstance. The eternal law of attraction conducts the orchestra of the living and the dead.
MANEKI NEKO BY SCHROEDINGER (14 of 18)
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS Uta Geub paints this nod to good luck through the Japanese lucky cat, whose aim is to wake us up and make us aware of the mortal danger of dwelling in an unchangeable past or an uncertain future. The only thing that truly belongs to us is the present of the present.
GRAPE PICKER IN A BLUE BLOUSE
PENCIL, ACRYLIC AND GOLD LEAF ON CANVAS An unusual portrait of a woman farm worker. This commissioned work the artist is painting is meant as both a tribute and a manifesto. The woman, who is expecting a child, bent over and lost in thought, faces a day's labour under the August sun that has just risen. The state of the work lets the viewer observe her colourful clothing, drawn in a way that is both subtle and complete.