Kike Ortega showcases an exclusive selection of works in Miami using recycle materials. Originally from Pontevedra, Spain, Kike Ortega draws inspiration from his formal training as an architect, profound curiosity in people and their emotional state, as well as his passion for the environment.

Kike Ortega started painting as soon as he could hold a brush. Upon his father’s insistence, he completed an architecture degree, which greatly influenced his art, combining innate creativity with process and structure. Kike’s unique technique reflects his desire to innovate, impact, demolish pre-existing notions, and ultimately take the risk. His creative process is a self-described dialog with the chosen materials.

The role of Art in the current context of ecological crisis is certainly important. In Contemporary Art, the Art / Nature relationship adopts a series of manifestations that we artists develop through our ideas.

In my work, nature has gone from being an object of representation to becoming the main character or the subject of a type of art that acts on it or with it.

For some time it has become usual the identification of the concept of nature with ecology and as a consequence, this has resulted in the so-called ecological Art …….. but my art is not only ecological. No …… it is not ….. or it is not so much.

It is true that many of my pieces are made with recyclable materials. This obviously implies a speech on the re-use of our planet resources, but it does not mean that it necessarily entails a political nature, nor a protest. I really work instinctively and somehow in the middle of it. I do my bit to preserve nature.

I simply explore new materials and they give me great freedom to work. A painter, an artist has to have the ability to discover possibilities where others don’t see anything.

In my paintings when I paint, I seek to let the materials speak with rawness and honesty (concrete, metal, wood) allowing each of them to input its value (forcefulness, warmth, roundness) and try to balance it in the best way possible way.

As Eduardo Bebono said: “… it is about observing objects, not only for what they are but also for what they could become ……….. It has never harmed anyone, when you have understood one thing for what it is, to go deeper and try to see what else it could be. “I have always developed my work through my homeland elements as a union nexus. I like history I like “the old”.

And I like Galicia and what it represents …… its burlap and its textures that represented so well our raw material ……. our literature work, some perhaps too forgotten …… The wood of our eucalyptus trees, pines and fish boxes… with such a life and with the smell of the sea …… the jerry cans that come and go, and those that were too exhausted and were left behind in our land, useless on their original function, to form part of our environment.

I like Galicia, always so close to the American Continent. I like to remember that we were part of its history. Kike Ortega. (CCE Miami press-release)