It's a lot of what the photo shows, but it's amazing what you can't show. Photography takes the picture of the painting, just what has been depicted in the painting, and when nothing has been represented, photography is still the representation of a body, of a thing, of a being. Paintings are bodies, they are things, beings. And there's nothing like watching it close. Sometimes it is impossible for us, in this case it is essential.

Barbara Stammel (Söcking, Germany, 25 October 1960) has long lived in Getaria, where she has her study. He studied Fine Arts in Munich and Barcelona, since then he has been dedicated to painting.

He's the one who rides the racks, who puts the curtain on. “There was a beautiful store in Gipuzkoa Square, it was closed.” He bought the pigments there. “Now it’s harder and more expensive to get pigments, you have to ask them from abroad.” Mix of flaxseed oil with colors. He. The earth, the temples, the ochres, mainly use brown colors, among which the blues, the yellows, the reds stand out: they give a huge vitality to work.

He himself constructs bodies, usually from the same measure, 160 x 160, and enters into them with his whole body, remembering the viewer that painting is physical and making physical gaze. Matter is present in its works, as evoking the overlapping layers and layers, gestures, marks, many other bodies that are within every body.

“This was my mother. I had no intention of painting him, but he left me.” Perform series until each face is completely exhausted, from its body to the body of the picture. Paintings are bodies, they are things, beings.

Sometimes it makes you think of Marlene Dumas.