Laboratories: Insights into the Permanent Collection. Aitor Ortiz

To mark the 10th Anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, in 2007 a series of exhibitions entitled Laboratories: Insights into the Permanent Collection was launched. The purpose was to give the public a chance to learn more about selected works in the Collection, including each artist’s creative process, cultural or intellectual references, materials, and artistic discourse.

In 2008 the Museum acquired Walls of Light 011 (Muros de luz 011, 2005), a piece made by Bilbao artist Aitor Ortiz, and part of an eponymous series created between 2004 and 2006. Photographed at the black marble quarry in the Biscayan town of Markina, Ortiz’s work enters a primitive place and inserts quadrangular spaces of pristine white light. To the artist, the contrast between the volume of stone and the cubicle it creates represents a mental refuge, a non-existent place, an unequivocal symbol of "the ordering power of the mind and of the artistic project of raw material." In this presentation, Walls of Light 011 confronts and relates to other pieces from different stages in the work of Aitor Ortiz, all of which are key to his creative process.