Although the materials he uses are determined by the subtractive mixing of colour pigments, the artist pushes the limits of the tension exerted on the articulation of language itself and on the opacity of the pictorial medium.

Individual colours - spread out in precise translucent layers placed on the horizontal canvas - control the modelling and management of light. This lengthy process allows the permeability of the layers to determine the retention of light and the vibration of colour; the artist defines this place as the distance within.

Tide Marks, the work that gives the exhibition its name, suggests a narrative space that uses chromatic modulations rather than chiaroscuro to define sequences and passages. Shapes only emerge from the white background through the presence of colour. Due in part to the luminosity of the painting's lower section, the work resembles a mural fragment, stopping abruptly before moving into whiteness. While all evidence of the application of paint disappears under the irradiation of colour, it can nevertheless be traced in the lines that are also a record of the layers applied.

The works in Tide Marks stem from a critical reading of optical images of open spaces projected through a magnifying glass handheld in the shade. The flickering of light and the penumbra soften the contours of the images, while colours become atmospheric and more luminous where the light overlaps. Colours breathe, searching for limits and definition until they disappear into the light. The eye can perceive, with minimal depth of field, spaces that are known to be wide and complex. These projections, created in childhood, were, in a sense, the artist's first paintings and an initial way of interpreting the visual world. With his back to the window, and facing a thumbnail image of the landscape, Irazábal's perspective began to broaden while he also began to question direct observation: …spatia montes in cubiculo dilatantia. "The spaces that stretch the mountains to the very room itself", wrote Pliny the Elder referring to the painted panels that decorated indoor chambers. With our peering gaze and dreams, painting expands and moves the world.