Seven years on from his last solo gallery exhibition, David Bestué presents his first show at Ehrhardt Flórez.

The exhibition is titled gran ojo (‘big eye’) due to the tension it presents between greyscale and pure colours. In his recent works, the colour scheme of the materials used – including those sourced from waste material – was determined by their raw nature. Bestué has now chosen to add another layer: surfaces coated in pure, complementary colours. A striking contrast is thus created between the greyish, ‘worn-out’ (as the artist describes it) materiality and something that seems otherworldly, fresh, as yet unadulterated.

When working with materials sourced from waste, Bestué typically starts with something that has already been many other things before: shredded paper and fabrics, metal slag, bone ash or sawdust. This usually results in a greyish or brownish hue in which everything appears to have dissolved to the same level, undifferentiated and insipid.

For some time now he…