A FEW NOTES FROM THE ARTIST
The global plague of 2020 has meant the end of the world as we have known it up to that point. The dismantling and suspension of all projects, interventions and exhibitions, public and private, planned for the next two years or more has made us rethink the way we work. Since the beginning of the 90s the mechanics had consisted of developing projects that responded to a specific discourse, as opposed to what came from the 60s, 70s and 80s, in which the objective was the creation of each work, perhaps developing a small series of research, or variants, or trial and error work, but seeking a creation at the end of the road. Project vs Work/object.
The long confinement of 2020, almost four months in a flat, led to a season on the beach, in the Mediterranean, with my mental seams a bit out of whack, a ream of Michel paper measuring 112 x 76 cm and acrylics and charcoals to paint without a project.
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I started to work without previous premises, without rational objectives, without a plan. Paper on a wall or on the floor and let my hand run, rummaging through the folds of memory, of the subconscious. Recovering, I know this now, the pleasure of painting. Without any responsibility, as there is no project or objective. Just filling in papers without fear, for nothing, just because. Unsuspected things started to come out. Opinions around me, as I uploaded images of the process to the networks, related the result to the work of my beginnings in the early 80s, as if it were a return to the irresponsibility of youth. I hadn't realised until they told me.
Characters acting on each other. This is what came out of me, what the hand did at its own free will. I discovered that the biblical stories of our childhood, of our Judeo-Christian education, almost treated in a mythological tone, like marvellous tales, are imprinted as paradigms on our hard drive and sprang up as justification, as explanation or as an excuse to continue with the next image. Then, as the head works in freedom, the Holy Scriptures become the trace that helps the hand to think even less. That its movement is automatic, fast, surprising. And so two guys fighting are Cain and Abel; men and women are Samson and Delilah or Judith and Holofernes ... -
The sources of each are many and complex. Mine come out in this work without being able to hide: German expressionism, which I consider the joy of fierce and free painting as of those condemned to death who have nothing to lose. The American Pop of the 60s and 70s, with its sense of inconsequence, of aesthetics and above all its vocation to reach as many people as possible. Of the flight from sects of initiates and metalanguages.
And the cinema, comics, television and everything that is the world we have had to live in this 21st century. This last winter, the one of the apocalyptic snowfall and pandemic confusion, I have revised and completed the work already in Madrid and added some new pieces to the series. Perhaps underlining the pop and urban side of a work that began in the countryside by the sea.
I would just like to add that the title SCRIPTURES responds to the biblical theme on the one hand, but above all to the use of written texts on the paintings as another element to construct an image that wants to be a story, a sensation, a stimulus and to enrich a small space in the world for a short time. -
Available artworks
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Artist Javier de Juan reflects on his work. Scriptures 2021
After the harsh confinement in Madrid, the Madrid artist Javier de Juan settled for a few months in a coastal spot on the Mediterranean, equipped and accompanied by a good number of sheets of paper, acrylics and charcoals, and, above all, with a great desire and need to open up new channels of creation and, more importantly, with the determined plan of not having any plan at all. As he himself says, "to let my hand run through the folds of my memory, of my subconscious". Letting the pure pleasure of painting - an elixir less and less consumed by many painters - fill his days and nights. Thus arose "Escrituras", a peculiar biblical imaginary.
