Fernando Alba / María Álvarez / Tania Blanco / Iyán Castaño / Maite Centol / Kela Coto Assaf Iglesias / Lisardo / Hugo O´Donnell / Elena Rato / María Jesús Rodríguez
Centro de Arte Rupestre Tito Bustillo
Text by the commissioner
All true art is contemporary, a universal language whose core is transmitted unchanged through time and across space. Joaquín Vaquero Turcios.
Lo que es eterno (That Which Is Eternal) brings together 11 artists from different generations and different aesthetic approaches with the aim of showing the artwork’s value as both trace and testimony. The project has arisen from the intention of delving into the constants that have made visual creation one of humanity’s main forms of expression from prehistoric times to the present day. There is something in artworks that makes them imperishable. There is an invisible thread that, despite its fragility, makes artworks eternal.
On 5 April, the artists visited the Tito Bustillo Cave with a specialised guide in order to get a closer look at the different aspects that, from a geological, archaeological and artistic point of view, have made this cave a world reference. That visit was the starting point for each artist to approach the experience in their own personal way. Many questions and multiple reflections translated into visual language showing how this magical place continues to be somewhere that astonishes, a site that inspires, as well as providing an opportunity for recreation and a pretext for contemporary visual creation.
The world is continually transforming and, in that transformation, art retains an aspect that endures over time, that makes it eternal. There is a direct connection between the cave, the cave paintings of Tito Bustillo and the works of art that are now on display.
What is unquestionable is that the contributions today’s creators offer us are immersed in the endless pilgrimage that is the history of humanity. Their works of today will be the heritage of the future.
Asociación Atelier de Proyectos
Commissioner: Santiago Martínez
Posters
Maite Centol
Pintar la tierra con tierra (Painting the Earth with Earth) (13 paint blocks and 1 colouring sheet)
13 paint blocks, 2025
Pigments, virgin beeswax, oil, approx. 10 x 10 x 5 cm each
(Development of a creative process using oxides to produce 13 blocks of pictorial material, following the materials analysis and statistics carried out by researchers Balbín and Alcolea on the paintings in the Tito Bustillo cave.)
1 colouring sheet, The Sapiens, 2025
Drawing on 125 x 100 cm watercolour paper
(Calligraphy on watercolour paper; harmonic, rhythmic repetition, emphasising representative value through graphic mark-making, to redraw – replicating as a form of punishment, like “writing something 100 times” – the Sapiens-era vulvas from the Camarín (small chamber)).
The idea of a living cave is a latent approach in Pintar la tierra con tierra (Painting the Earth with Earth), and it is made concrete in two elements, open to modification in their approach.
The idea of material as a vessel for knowledge, time, experience and thought is fundamental to this proposal... Pigment as the foundation of abstract thinking, of behavioural innovation and of symbolic thought.
A reflection on materiality through the experience of transforming raw material. Activating its expressive potential is a continuous return to exploration – feeling the material, interacting with the tools, making, reflecting, observing, undoing and redoing – a way of approaching creative practice through action.
Fernando Alba
The Memory of Stones, “Eros” (La memoria de las piedras, “Eros”), 2025
Sandstone, hammerstone and paint, 75 x 127 x 53 cm
The past shapes us; I am drawn to the silence of time – the silence of those who came before us and now dwells within us forever – sounding and resounding through history; the primordial silence to which we always return to embark on new adventures, the silence of the eternal, the silence of what is deepest in the human being, ancestral silence, that guiding thread which moves us and makes us human.
We need art to communicate from the deepest part of ourselves, to transcend reality, to engage in dialogue with the unknown, to feel that we connect with the hidden aspects in us. Art awakens us and questions our most banal dreams.
Fernando Alba
La memoria de las piedras, “Silencio Orgánico” (The Memory of Stones, “Organic Silence”), 2025
Sandstone, angle grinder, water and paint, 45 x 123 x 105 cm
I perceive in the stones that I present an organic silence that consolidates and takes on volume – a magmatic structure forged in the bowels of the earth, imbued with its energy and building its memory.
The stones’ memory – in dialogue with their morphology – awakens emotion and reason to inscribe signs on the surface and to build a dialogue across time; and water, as the source of life and a transformative agent of the subsoil, creates subterranean landscapes.
I would like to think that my work is made up of small fragments of history through time. I am moved by questions, mystery and enigmas.
María Álvarez
Lo que fluye (That Which Flows), 2025
Acrylic on paper mounted on board and frame, 22 x 29 x 5 cm each.
Recording and editing of the San Miguel river: Pablo Casanueva.
Lo que fluye (That Which Flows) consists of a diptych in which the subterranean plays a central role, and the soundscape of the San Miguel River – the ‘silent’ protagonist I lay claim to in this work.
The nature of water is to flow, to be in motion and subject to constant change. The course of the river San Miguel runs underground, a few metres below the cave. It crosses the cave and, although we do not see it, it can be heard in several sections of the tour: this aspect connects and unites my proposal to the project Lo que es eterno (That Which Is Eternal).
Tania Blanco
Eco, 2025
Ceramic installation, variable dimensions (200 x 200 cm in this case)
My work is a mural installation composed of different ceramic pieces in shades of red and black. Like the cave paintings, the reds are obtained from a high proportion of iron oxide, while the blacks come from a higher manganese content. These ceramic forms are located in a territory of ambiguity: they may evoke enigmatic symbols charged with an unknown meaning or they may refer to archaic tools, close to what the human hand might have created in its first creative gestures.
This tension between what is known and what remains veiled is the core of my work. My pieces do not seek to offer a decipherable message, but to open up a space of uncertainty. In them, it is not the object itself that is eternal, but the question it raises: what remains when meaning has been lost, when only the material trace and the echo of a human gesture remain?
Iyán Castaño
Sin huellas (No Footprints), 2025
Expanded graphic on canvas, 190 x 150cm
Walking on the sand is writing on a living, changing canvas, reminding me that my passage through the world is ephemeral, but never quite invisible. Each footprint is a testimony of what I was, a memory of a moment shared with the land and the sea, with those who preceded me and those who will come after me.
Sin huellas (No Footprints) proposes that, even if everything is erased, what matters is the gesture. The simple act of walking, of insisting on this transit, connects us to a universal ritual that has been repeated for thousands of years. The sea continues to erase, we continue to leave footprints. And in this eternal play between appearance and disappearance, the paradox of the ephemeral is revealed: that which never remains is, at the same time, the most constant.
Kela Coto
La sonrisa arcaica (The Archaic Smile), 2025
Full HD colour video, 5:43 min.
The Tito Bustillo Cave is a testimony to prehistoric history and culture; however, my work in this exhibition seeks to shed light on a contemporary reality that contrasts sharply with this mystical past. Today, the cave and its surroundings are no longer repositories of history, but have become the object of an extractive activity whose sole purpose is to intensively exploit natural resources.
The title La sonrisa arcaica (The Archaic Smile) refers to the first state of mind described by Jean Gebser as belonging to this prehistoric era. Archaic consciousness perceives the world immediately, without a clear distinction between subject and object, and is characterised by a deep connection with nature and a sense of oneness with the environment. This archaic mind is still present in us, so what would they think of our relationship with the territory, and how might this affect us if their vision were still part of our consciousness?
Assaf Iglesias
Lo que hacemos en la cueva (What We Do in the Cave), 2025
Acrylic on sanded driftwood with a “beloved” mussel shell, variable sizes.
What were we doing in the caves?
Everything; eating, drinking, sleeping, touching each other, dancing, making hooks and spear points, touching each other again and much more. One of my favourite things to do was to shine torches on the artists who decorated our caves; I liked it because you didn't have to move much (practically not at all) and you could often do it sitting down. It was important not to waste energy in case we had to run away from a predator. In return, the artists gave us leftover paint, which was very much appreciated because they were the only ones who knew how to make it. In the cave now called Tito Bustillo (we, the members of my tribe, called it Xanadu), one of the artists gave us paint as a present; I had never seen a colour like that, and that is how we discovered violet.
Assaf Iglesias
Lo que hacemos en la cueva (What We Do in the Cave), 2025
Acrylic on sanded driftwood with a “beloved” mussel shell, variable sizes.
In my tribe, there were two groups: the stone-pullers and the stick-sanders. By my nature, I joined the latter.
We collected sticks on the banks and mouth of the river, as well as on what is now known as the beach. We left them to dry, then polished and sanded them with mussel shells, but not just any mussel; it had to be a “beloved” mussel.
After applying the paint, we put them together in a crevice in the floor of the cave and covered it with a skin, taking it in turns to pull out one stick at a time. Depending on the thickness, shape and painted colour of the sticks, we knew what our tasks would be the next day. For example, if you chose a stick smaller than your index finger, slightly curved and painted lilac, you knew you had to go to the estuary to collect cockles.
So what you are going to see in the showcases is a complex communication system with many possible variations, and in turn, a kind of cryptic alphabet with which to assign tasks to group members.
It was much more aesthetic, fun and disciplined than listening to each other.
Lisardo
Untitled, 2025
Three pieces measuring 160 x 130 cm, 20 x 50 cm and 20 x 50 cm
Acrylic/linen
As you move away, the cavern becomes an impassable grotto. Yesterday and today, the same fire growing cold in this endless darkness.
Before the vertigo of your revealed nothingness, my own nothingness hides itself.
XXX
Where the past and the present sustain existence, all sense of being in time is but a moment – an everlasting moment.
XXX
In the depths, where the root of time does not dare to venture, the summit unfolds as an everyday act. While you, in an everlasting dream of life, sink into the stagnant water of my soul – a tesserae of God.
Return, yes, but where to? *
*Excerpt from the author’s text for the catalogue: Speaking to you, in that which is eternal, makes time flow. Stagnant water in a life lived for itself.
Hugo O'Donnell
El clan del Quentu la Payarina (The Quentu la Payarina Clan), 2025
Installation of 21 pieces in different formats, acrylic on canvas.
La estalactita de les vulves (The Stalactite of the Vulvas), 2025
12 pieces measuring 10 x 10 cm, charcoal on canvas
Whenever I start my journey on a blank canvas, I try to keep in mind the emotion that must have been felt by the first person who was aware of the trace of their finger on the damp wall of a cave; those first traces of humanity are the ones that interest me most in the history of art.
With this premise and after the visit to the Tito Bustillo Cave, these pieces were created:
El clan del Quentu la Payarina (The Quentu la Payarina Clan), (thanks to the collaboration of all my neighbours from Busloñe), and La estalactita de les vulves (The Stalactite of the Vulvas), as a small tribute to the Camarín (small chamber).
Elena Rato
Panel desnudo (Bare Panel), 2025
Specific installation, canvas on sculptural support, variable dimensions.
Just as in prehistoric times, when caves and their walls were used as supports, taking advantage of the natural rocky reliefs to highlight parts of their drawings, the supports of these nude paintings emphasise form above all else.
My proposal fits with the creative line I have been developing in recent years. The painting becomes an object, a pictorial installation. I conceive the frame not as a mere support, but as a body in transformation that is articulated three-dimensionally and projected into space. For my initial research into this new path, I have been making simple manipulations from conventional wooden frames. The cuts and assemblies that lead me to vary the regular shapes of the classic format, generally square or rectangular, have given way to irregular supports, multiplying the formats exponentially with great variety.
María Jesús Rodríguez
Cartón I – Estalagmita (Cardboard I – Stalagmite), 2025
Cardboard + paint + varnish, 194 x 35 x 30 cm.
Cartón II – Estalactita (Cardboard II – Stalactite), 2025
Cardboard + paint + varnish, 2 pieces, 110 x 30 x 22 cm and 192 x 28 x 20 cm.
I have always been moved by looking at the small, modest landscape tied to my life and memory; hence my preference for the slates of western Asturias, the shingle shores, the roadside ditches, the vegetable plots – and, this time, the limestone formations in the Tito Bustillo Cave. A stalactite and a stalagmite.