The Galerie Karsten Greve is pleased to present Offerings, Venezuelan born artist Raúl Illarramendi’s third solo exhibition in our Paris gallery, featuring new works from a series of paintings and drawings inspired by a historical event from his native country.This body of work, which as a whole is considered by the artist as a parallel project to his more traditional output, originated at the junction between a personal experience in Illarramendi’s family, in the midst of a natural disaster that affected his country, and a poorly documented historical event of great spiritual significance.During the night of the 29th of July 1967, a major earthquake shook the heart of Caracas, as well as other coastal towns near the capital destroying many buildings and causing considerable loss of life. Among the extensive material damage, the Caracas Cathedral was left mostly unscathed, if not for the cast-iron cross that fell from the highest point of its frontispiece. The cross fell flat on the pavement in front of the Cathedral leaving its imprint engraved on the ground.Amongst the people who witnessed the event, several accounts came forth claiming that the earth stopped shaking the instant the cross touched the ground, immediately prompting a collective claim of a miracle. This situation lasted only a few days until the authorities decided to remove the section of asphalt with the trace in order to better preserve the miraculous proof. The trace mysteriously disappeared from public view for many years.

The starting point of Raúl Illarramendi’s project was an enigmatic image, a historical document, possibly one of the first photographs depicting the silhouette of the cross freshly imprinted on the asphalt.“From the first image, the connections with my own artistic work began to become evident: the trace, the surface, the accident, the distance, the contact, the unintentional gesture, the memory..."

All these elements are indeed present in Illarramendi’s long lasting interest in reproducing traces left by human activity, with an emphasis on confronting the spontaneity of the traces with the meticulous endeavour of his drawing technique. Found on walls, sidewalks, gateways and doorways, these traces are photographed and chosen for their composition and for their evocative power. The artist thus accumulates a repertory of images that serve as inspiration for his compositions.

Illarramendi’s fascination with this event led him to start a research that would channel the historical, social and very intimate connections he was making; with the ultimate goal of bringing this remarkable tale back into the public light. Supported by his brother Javier, he eventually succeeded in organizing an intervention to cast the original trace in order to reproduce a replica that would serve as support for the Offerings series.  As noticed by the art historian Felix Suazo: “in the series Offerings his choice is unique because he is working with copies obtained directly from a section of the place where an extraordinary event occurred: which means he works on the facsimile of a trace”.

“I held in my hands a replica, a fragment of the soil of Caracas. Distance (temporal and geographical); the desire to transcend the history of this event and channel the spirituality that emanates from it; the personal and intimate connections via the experience of my family; a visual essay comparing the soil of Caracas in 1967 with that of today’s city (the first showing the stigmata of a natural disaster, the latter those of a country undergoing a large-scale socio-political disaster) – all these elements informed my painting”.

Just as religious belief and Venezuelan popular piety attributes healing powers to the cross as a votive image, Raúl Illarramendi’s gesture is an offering that heralds hope for an end to Venezuela’s current critical state. The Offerings series is at the edges of a collective unconscious and personal story. It is a gateway from present to past, from past to present.