Illán Argüello

The emergence of Venus, by Illán Argüello, is presented at CentroCentro within the EPICENTRO program, a dynamic space of visibility and opportunity conceived for invited artists, which especially promotes mid-career creators and recognizes the solidity of their trajectory and their contribution to the contemporary artistic landscape. The work proposes a visual reflection on a near future in which the artificial and the natural coexist in an ambiguous and dehumanized landscape. Through an iconography of a constructive nature and a precious use of color, the artist constructs a strange and autonomous habitat, where the absence of the human figure allows for an open reading of the uncertain and the unknown.

1 works in the series

In this series, Argüello focuses on architectural structures and artificial landscapes that seem suspended in time. The constructions are not inhabited, but they "feel" the presence of the human through their own design. Formal logic —geometry, volume, shadow— becomes a vehicle for exploring the tension between the solid and the void, the present and the latent.

3 works in the series

Here, the artist delves into the hidden dimension of space: areas where human activity is set aside, where silence seems amplified by scale and pictorial treatment. Argüello combines clean atmospheres, austere iconography, and a fragmentation of the figurative that invites pause. In this series, silence is almost tactile, somber, harmonic.

12 works in the series

Argüello displays a more intimate and direct facet of his aesthetic universe: the light support of paper and the technique of charcoal or chalk allow him to accentuate contrast, the signature of the line, and the tension between the constructed and the void. Here, drawing is not a preparatory sketch but an independent, autonomous work; paper becomes a field of experimentation where architecture fragments and shadow becomes a stroke. In this stage, the artist opts for formal economy, a monochromatic palette, and graphic precision to delve into the notion of site — a mental, architectural, psychological site — and to show how the constructed contains the latent, the hidden, and the implicit. Paper thus serves as an interface between the intuition of space and the architecture of memory.

1 works in the series

In his freer works, Illán Argüello expands his language towards a more expressive and open dimension, where geometry fragments and form becomes a trace or intuition. He explores the balance between control and accident, between structure and gesture, maintaining his technical rigor. Color and texture gain prominence, blurring the boundaries between the architectural and the organic. These works function as a conceptual laboratory where the artist revisits and tensions his own formal codes. Together, they reveal a search for the essential: the moment when form dissolves to give way to the idea.

3 works in the series