Rafael Agredano (Córdoba, 1955) was founding member in the early Eighties of Figura magazine which at that time turned out to be indispensable for the opening up of Spanish plastic arts, and which is one of our myths of the end of the past century. He started the adventure up along with a group of artists called "Grupo de Sevilla" , of well known names in today's Spanish Art:: Pedro G. Romero, Federico Guzmán, Curro Gonzalez, Guillermo Paneque, Pepe Espaliu, Patricio Cabrera, Ricardo Cadenas, Antonio Sosa and Abraham Lacalle. At that time they were beginning to make their way hand in hand with merging galleries like La Maquina Española (Sevilla) and Fúcares (Almagro, Madrid). All of these artists had an immediate welcome in Valencia in the programming at Galeria Temple, precursor of the now Galería Tomás March .

Since then, Rafael Agredano has carried out and taken part in many solo and group exhibitions, inside as well as outside Spain.(as can be seen in his lengthy and extensive c.v.) , many of them in the city of Valencia. His first solo show at Galería Temple in 1988 titled "Los Secretos del Comportamiento", was followed by "La Belle Excentrique" in 1992, and, in 1994, then at Galería Tomás March, "Los sucesos de Aviñon según la narración del marinero", later, "Hard Light Opera" in 1997, and in 2001 "Je t¹e.maile... moi non plus".

In this new series Rafael Agredano presents today at our gallery: "Action Painting (The Beauty & the Bit)" the artist continues with his incursion into new technologies started in his series ³Je t¹e.maile...moi non plus². Rafael Agredano uses new generation computers, They allow him to create image-paintings skipping traditional paintbrushes, and give him the possibility to take the images he has worked on -real size- , from his computer on to photographic paper with the new LAMBDA system. He obtains in this way perfectly sharp and detailled results, which, without distancing him from painting, allow him to create a complexity of colour fields and different readings within the same picture.

In the artist¹s own words. "Action Painting (The Beauty & the Bit)" is not a design exercise intending to copy virtually historical abstraction. Computers are nowadays so much easier to use that they make gestures possible as simply and with the same results as would be obtained with the gesture of throwing paint on canvas, or the speed of a brush stroke without previous ad complicated mathematical calculations. I do not intend in these works to simulate that painting. Though, sometimes they keep some resemblance - as an homage , or out of personal taste - they have nothing to do with it. It is an Action Painting made with computer, I use computer esthetics and take advantage of its possibilities. In some cases, the stroke seems to be frozen as in a photography. In other cases, the action obeys to the computer¹s esthetics and does not remind of pictorial materials like oil - though that could be done with some programs made to simulate virtually diferent ways of painting (...) Finally I intend to pay homage to that art that computer engineers of the Centro de Cálculo de la Universidad de Madrid thought would be made some day humanizing these cold, noisy and huge calculation instruments. This art started in Spain at the end of the 60¹s in the CCUM, promoted by humanist and utopian scientists who believed in computers as instruments that would amplify human intelligence capacity, as an extension of it and as expansion of artistc capacity. Instruments for improvisation and warm gestures out of some automatic inspiration - at the very moment of inspiration - with an inmediate response to the artist¹s wishes, and, in a fraction of a second could represent the esthetics of disorder and chaos of the human soul - just as it was forecasted by visionaries during these seminars in utopian years (...)"