Individual exhibition “Spanische Malerei” [Spanish Painting] It is a pictorial portrait of the Spanish reality in a geometric key. In this new series, the Berlin-based collective develops a line already addressed in some of their latest works in which, under the name of "social geometry", statistical data is used to determine different geometric compositions.

PSJM formalizes this new work strictly adhering to the materials of the painting. In a more or less explicit way, the reflection on painting has permeated the trajectory of this team that precisely this year 2013 celebrates its tenth anniversary with the great anthological exhibition “PSJM: A critical decade, 2003-2013” in San Martín Center for Contemporary Culture   of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. If this retrospective exhibition accounts for the history of the collective, "Spanische Malerei" constitutes the creative product of 2013, a year submerged in the greatest economic crisis that we have ever experienced. Somehow, the demands for austerity can be seen both in the production process, now far removed from the shiny industrial surfaces to which the collective had accustomed us, and in the modesty of the new, much smaller space at Blanca Soto, a gallery with which PSJM has been collaborating since its first solo show in 2003. Thus, the difficult times that the cultural sector is experiencing are faced in a direct and honest way. As will also be the political, economic and social reality that is brought to the scene in these mathematical reflections captured in acrylic on canvas.

Despite the handmade nature of these paintings, the precision and cleanliness of their workmanship resemble the relentless hand of the machine. The primary industrial colors are drastically applied  following radical compositions that take the figure of the angular triangle as the dominant element. Away from any decorative pretense, these “readable paintings” suggest a harsh reality that has been objectified by the flow of impersonal information. Data and colors that hide personal dramas, dominant ideological tendencies, social discontent.

"Spanische Malerei" speaks of Spain in the German language. It is therefore not surprising that the work “Bundestag 2009” welcomes us in the gallery space, a pictorial composition of a German parliament whose neoliberal majority mercilessly governs the destinies of Europe. The diptych "General Elections in Spain 2011" consists of two small-format paintings. The composition of the first obeys the actual number of votes, including the large abstention, null and blank votes, and the second conforms to the final distribution in parliament after applying the D'Hont law, guarantor of the two-party system. Paintings of apothems that delimit the corporate colors of political brands, electoral apparatus dedicated to the vote market. With a nostalgic look or perhaps as a sign of a utopia full of dangers, PSJM shows “República Española 1936”, another electoral painting, this time tinged with aged black and white that recalls the victory at the polls of the Popular Front.

Next to these electoral tables of radial geometry, two large-format pieces are exhibited that build their message with sharp triangular teeth in  Cartesian coordinates: “Number of demonstrations in Spain

2003-2012” and “Public debt 2000-2012”. The representation of the temporal dimension here shows the growing social unrest and the evolution of the sentence, in the form of debt, that several generations of citizens will have to suffer.