• Art Statement
  • Drawing
  • Sculpture
  • Installation
  • Performace
  • Photography
    • Lineage
      (2022)
    • Memories
      (2024)
    • The Invisibles
      (2024)
    • Bolton Hill (2025)
  • About
  • Contact

Rubén Penya



Art Statement




I understand art as a story of reality, taking in the means, materials and subjects to leave the imprint of a time and a space, its people and its events. In this sense, my work is an inventory of the tools that the present has placed before me, which I use to reflect on my life experience and the contradictions of the context in which we live. My work serves as a diary of a journalist who crosses the boundaries of photography and materially to express what is hidden in words. That is, a diverse but increasingly globalized context where multiple realities participate, always complex, often confronted, and sometimes difficult to digest.


Whether in response to the imprint we leave on an increasingly degraded environment or on the personalities of our fellow human beings, my work in installation, sculpture, drawing, performance, and photography shares the atmosphere of restlessness, anguish, and tense calm typical of today's society. It is an atmosphere that sometimes borders on tragedy and abandonment. I work with found objects whose expressive power often makes any further intervention unnecessary. Drawings where the line doesn't seek to resemble reality, but rather expresses it. Performances that turn real life into a medium of expression. All of them are pieces that generate the feeling that something has happened or will happen, that transmit an aura of mystery and distrust.


My work challenges the viewer to think about the tensions of our time. Yet the work also reflects my passion for people, for life, and for a world that is much more than resentment, hierarchy and envy. A world that is conscience, honest and ripe for rebellion. In a time when it looks like we are willing to repeat the mistakes of the past, when individualism, selfishness and arrogance mark the agenda not only of governments but also of our daily lives, I work to build a multidisciplinary practice with a critical view of society. It just needs to be read.



Copyright © 2021-2025, Rubén Penya.

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