The MUN inaugurates the exhibition '39 décimos', showing for the first time its fourth décimo, a set of pieces made for the MUN.

An unclassifiable artist, painter, engraver, sculptor, filmmaker, installer, excellent draftsman, pioneer in the use of technology in art, a good, cheerful, generous and patient man, great cook, passionate about poetry and flamenco and an inexhaustible curiosity. These are some of the qualities that define José Luis Alexanco (Madrid, 1942-2021), the author of Thirty-nine tenthsthe exhibition that opens this Monday at LaCaixa's La Casa de la Cultura Museo Universidad de Navarra and that can be visited until March 26th. Present at the presentation to the media were Valentín Vallhonart and Rafael Levenfeld, artistic directors of the Museum and curators of the exhibition; Nieves González, the artist's widow; the artist Sergi Aguilar and the mathematician Capi Corrales, both friends of the artist; and the musician José Tejera Osuna.

            The exhibition, a tribute to the artist, exhibits for the first time his Four Tenthswhich he created for the Museum's artist-in-residence project and on which he was working Tender Puentes project and on which he was working at the time of his death in 2021. It is the first time that the public will be able to contemplate together his four Tenths, along with paintings and drawings that help as an overture to this great work. Thus, 39 Tenths, which is conceived as a synthesis of his artistic being and not as an anthological exhibition, is articulated around the main aspects of the artist's work process between 1964 and 2021.

            "Alexanco accepted the Museum's invitation to begin a new project that could be framed within the framework of our residencies, which would allow him to open up an artistic process and make it available to different audiences. For this, we counted on his presence, his will and disposition, and on the illusion that it meant for him to return to Pamplona and celebrate his 80th birthday with us in the year of the 50th anniversary of the Pamplona Encounters of '72, for which he was responsible with Luis de Pablo", Vallhonrat recalls. However, during that creative process, the artist passed away, the piece remained unfinished and the Museum considered canceling the project. "We received immediate support from the artist's family. Despite their grief, they were witnesses to the illusion, work and state in which the piece was in. His close friends, in the midst of the pain of his loss, also knew of the importance of the project, which went from having the artist's presence and words to being a curatorial project with a choral spirit."

Now, this piece can be seen for the first time, together with the other three murals of the series Los Décimos, which the artist began in 1976: "This is 48 years of work. The exhibition also includes the background and origin of Alexanco's work, with a first drawing from 1964, and the pieces that allow us to follow its evolution". 

With the fourth Tenth, the visitor is offered a perspective of his creative process, since each of the pieces is in a different stage of completion, thus showing the artist's work process in its creation. For its realization, Alexanco started from a first impression, usually a scanned drawing regardless of its resolution, as the piece was acquiring definition and precise lines through the different layers that were added in the composition. Cut-outs, wefts, drawings, paint..., layers that fit together until they acquired their final appearance.

"It is an unusual possibility: to approach the most recent work of the artist to go back in time to access his wisdom and knowledge, the evolution of his language, to understand the richness of the resources through observation, the encounter with the details, to have to move to see the pieces in their entirety," explains the curator. In this sense, he points out that "the Tenths, panoramic pieces fifteen meters wide, force us to walk, to approach and move away. They invite us to think, to feel, to see, to be active and not passive spectators".

The projection room, Percursuma large film and sound piece with music by José Tejera Osuna, functions, in turn, as a compendium of his career. "In itself, it is a total work, a film that penetrates Alexanco's work. It takes place inside his painting, his drawing, his sculptures, and includes movement, time, rhythm and music. The music that is present as a score in all of Alexanco's work. The rhythm and cadence that mark his Tenths and that invite us to find resonances and internal rhythms, become visible and audible in Percursum ," he explains. The script of the film is by Alexanco himself, the music and editing by José Tejera; and the movement, rhythm, narrative, timing, music and voices are by Dora Tisserand and Mai Aftah al Bouny.

39 tenths reflects the restless spirit of an artist who has always been more attracted to the process than to the result, the infinite capacity of transformation of ideas, creation, data and matter.