[Presentation text for the invitational solo show: Los 4 elementos, Casa Fuerte de Bezmiliana - Rincón de la Victoria (Málaga), Spain. June 2003]
The work of Yolanda del Riego is vibrant and delights, it surprises and interests in as much as it declares – up-front and transparently – that there is an art that is born of itself, like water from a spring. It is an art that we see emerge from its own material imprint and from the arduous work of its own process, while proving to be a creation set upon a well-delineated emotional territory: one comprised of the action and its effect on its own coming into existence. It is an art that does not refrain itself out of consideration for canon, nor of genre, nor of language; an art, that does not heed limits as it is created from its intimate excellence, mixing without contradicting traditional methods of printmaking (primarily, etching and xylography) and painting (with a clear preference for the use of water-based ink as in the Japanese tradition). It is, then, an art essentially – and not strategically – transgressor, an art that – as Bataille would have said – allows the creator to "know the infinite, while glimpsing an existence free of rules and constrictions", and which bestows that utopian aspect which distinguishes all genuine art. From it all, we come to the awareness of the veracity of its natural expression, its extraordinary spontaneity.
At the same time the referential clue to this art is Nature. And, although there is more abstraction in this process each time, Yolanda recognizes always that she is very "caught up" in landscape. This incorporation of abstraction and Nature, in the case of del Riego, has not led to any of the kind of landscape painting "in use", but rather to a profound and heartfelt painting of landscapes, through which process the painting becomes much more an "invocation" of Nature than the "reproduction" of landscape motifs. So it is proclaim by the group of paintings shown here, in which, together with the intermittent recovery of landscape as a genre of painting, (which if evident, above all in the striking, transparent, and abstracted series of water colors), we see how it prevails and wins over in the most recent oeuvre the resort to, in poetic key, -in a manner not univocally, - that Yolanda makes of motifs, ideas and elements of Nature 'in general', such as it is evident in the versions of the indescribable image of Constelaciones, and likewise in the dense and gloomy themes related to the plastic expression of the recent and catastrophic oil spill of the Prestige –which are materialized here in the variations of Mar Herida- , and also in the works regarding a pure visual song – color and reflection- suggestions about marine matter, just as it has been expressed in the proposals of the suite Atlantic Quartet, and in a special way, the variations of the suite centered around the primordial Four Elements or "roots of being" –fire, water, air and earth-, designated by the pre-Socratic Empedocles as the spirit between the demonically and the divine- which corresponds with Zeus, Hera, Nestis and Adonis-, elements which, not in vain, lend their title to the complete body of this exposition.
Consequently, the images in the actual oeuvre of Yolanda del Riego –considering on a one to one basis and inclusive as a group –do not refer to a fix meaning, but rather they are established over the free game of the meaning/significant in their complete materiality. That is why we are confronted with a painting which language is supported preferably by gesture and in the drawn impromptu, and also in the expressive power of the "uncontrollable" effects which take place in works whose fundamental characteristic is determined by the use of an etching press; working with a press for Yolanda is a deeply creative procedure, with evolving registry, it is discovering what the fundamental etch plate can give us from its carved etch lines and its cut bevel contour , or its condition of the precise sharpened hardness of the steel or the sensual fleshy softness of the wood.
We are confronted, therefore, before an intensely live and open oeuvre, ruled by "asemantic brush stroke" –as stated by Norman Bryson - and by the dialectics of gesture and also by the very special expressive charge of the exquisite Japanese Paper, of which not only are taken advantage its textural intrinsic qualities, but also the evident of the reliefs left by the etchings, and the occasional creases cause by the pressure.
For all of that, these strong and seductive "painted prints" which are the works of Yolanda del Riego, reminds us so much of Delacroix’s struggle when he upheld that the biggest effort for the artist stems from "avoiding the infernal comfort of the brush", always favoring materials difficult to work with, and "if necessary making matter rebellious in order to conquer it with patience". This is where the energy of this oeuvre comes from. And of this energy, involving matter and process – that is, of the matter constructing the shape and structure- stems the strength and power of these images. Images of "unique art". Images of romantic painting. Images of an art which as Novalis postulated, are composed by, at the end, - that is to say, in the outcome-, in giving a high importance to the common thing, an aspect of enigma to the unremarkable, and the dignity of the ignored to the fully understood, an appearance of infinite to the finite, becoming the sentiment in the essence of infinitude the organ of universal perception for a painter like Yolanda del Riego.