Monday: Judas Arrieta

Arrieta paints and draws his characters on industrial tissues full of bright colors: crossing over lines, the faces are mixed up creating a pop-tasting mass.

Born in Hondarribia in 1971, Judas Arrieta had an infancy of full immersion in television programs, especially in animation “made in Japan”. Once he attended University he discovered big-size painting and since that time he started his artistic manifesto, “Manga art”, in which heroes from his infancy reappear populating his pictures as becoming personal myths of the alter ego. It’s just like Judas Arrieta recreates an eastern character who has abducted him. He affirms to have an “Otaku-Nippon” personality which is present in his whole work. Since the beginning Arrieta’s work has been developing on two different but parallels tracks, as he tells us: “one is history of art, especially painting, and the other is Asian pop iconography or the manga. My work is and has been an investigation on how to involve and use all the influences in a new and personal way.” The figurativeness of Judas Arrieta can be resumed in the manga universe, appropriation of visual fragments, which he de-contextualizes and transforms in abstract on recycled textile supports, sails and wood; a meditation on contemporary uneasiness and an exercise of pictorial hybridism. The exhibitions of the last years have been interdisciplinary, an interaction among painting, drawing, digital art, sculpture and video.

Judas Arrieta exhibited in Europe and Asia. Received the grant of Artistic Creation BBK (1997) and the Honour Mention of Bancaixa Award (1999); he has been selected in the ABC 2007 Award and in Premio Generación 2006 Award of Caja Madrid. His work has been adquired in pubblic collection as ARTIUM, Fundación BBK, INJUVE and UNED. Lives and works in Beijing.