Ibon Aranberri, Iñaki Garmendia and Azucena Vieites were awarded last year's Gure Artea prizes, the 18th year this competition has been held. Moreover, they are representative of a large body of contemporary Basque artists whose work is based on critical-discursive and self-reflective proposals. This exhibition includes new works by the three artists and has been laid out in such a way as to reflect the individuality and uniqueness of their art. We cannot speak of a collective exhibition in the normal sense of the word, but neither is it a one-man show or an exhibition of commissioned work. This presentation allows one to make a contextualised reappraisal of the creative development of these artists over recent years. Likewise, this exhibition will give us the opportunity of reviewing a number of ideas in real time in order to reassess the works of these three artists against the background of the current and future art scene at a local and international level.

Ibon Aranberri presents a continuation of Dam Dreams (2004), a series of investigative works (currently at the development stage) concerning water-management infrastructures in a number of Pyrenean valleys. The artificial landscape generated by the reservoirs appears to be an extension of a city map. A fictitious scenario erased of memory, today in ruins. At some point, this line of investigation, which includes sculpture, drawings and photographs, merges with a previous, unrealised project, the ephemeral reactivation of an abandoned nuclear power station on the Basque coast. Over a wider geographical area, water once again plays a leading role in the new series of aerial photographs specifically commissioned for this event.

Iñaki Garmendia continues to explore the narrative possibilities of group interaction and rock music in a new installation based on images in movement. In videos such as Kolpez kolpe and Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger the performance typical of the some cultures of young people is mixed with themes such as cultural translation or symbolic violence. In these new works, two people sing "a capella" the songs Red Light and Straight Edge. The atmosphere created during the filming and the way in which the subject is treated cause the camera to explore the poetic potential of the words, the voice and the portrait. A parallel narration places us in a constructed and mysterious action. The results have an abstract quality and powerful ideological traces.

The sampling culture, the feminist and trans-avant-garde generations and the "do-it-yourself" spirit of punk, are some of the sources used by Azucena Vieites to filter images in her iconography. Casting doubt on technical virtuosity as a basic requirement when developing a project (musical, artistic, or otherwise) renders a single image insufficient as an absolute image through a multiplicity of sequences that disassemble the narrative logic. Through strategies such as appropriation, citing or the attachment of new meanings, the drawings are renewed and recycled, and those done previously are left as an aesthetic/political reminiscence, the exploration of a long-lost era or generation.