Wolf

José María Yagüe Manzanares

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Oliver Sears Gallery is pleased to announce the launch of WOLF, an exhibition by Spanish born artist, José María Yagüe Manzanares. The genesis for this project starts in 2009 when the artist finds a dead wolf on one of his daily forest walks. Returning to the site he retrieves the skull and places it on a shelf in his study. A few years later while climbing mountains in Kerry, he discovers that one of the last wolves to be hunted in Ireland was trapped near the summit of Carrauntoohil in 1750. Manzanaresthen decided to begin a project to symbolically reintroduce the wolf into Ireland. After years of planning, he moved his Iberian wolf skull to Ireland and clandestinely buried it near the summit of Carrauntoohil. Originally he had intended to mark the memorial with a plaque but the clandestine nature of the project made this impossible. 

 

The exhibition presents a graphic story relating to this project with drawings, sketch books and maps. Studies that narrate the relationship between humans and wolves in Spain (indeed with other large animals also – bears & lynxes) ellide with landscapes of the mountain region of Kilkenny and other locations for the proposed memorial. The history of the natural world in Ireland is also embraced with depictions of extinct animals and familiar locations, short texts of recent encounters with wolves and a recent video of lupine experience, complete this astonishing multi faceted decade long reflection of triangular relationship between the earth, man and beast. The artist writes  “I need to believe that the slow modus in a particular sort of art makes us able to be in the world in a different way”.

 

 

José María Yagüe Manzanares was born in 1973. He has a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Salamanca in 2003. He studied Architecture (1992-1998) and completed the Doctorate Course "Architecture, Contemporaneity and Modernity" at the Dept. of Architectural Projects and Theory of the ETSA, Valladolid (2004-2006). He is member of ADACYL (Archive of Artists of Castilla y León) at the Musac of León. Since 2005 he has completed several projects, workshops and publications for the Science Museum of Valladolid.

 

A selection of exhibitons include: 2015: Utopías del refugio. Galería Adora Calvo, Salamanca.

2014:Creadores Íntimos. Iglesia de Las Francesas, Valladolid. 2013: Otro Arte. Palacio de Quitanar, Segovia. 2012: Paisajes improbables. Galería de Arte do TMG, Guarda (Portugal). Monasterio del Prado, Valladolid. Museo de León.  Casa de las Conchas, Salamanca. 2009: ARCO´09. Madrid. Santa Inés, Sevilla,  Sala del Carmen, Valencia.

 

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