‘Scriptures’ online exposure

The Isolina Arbulú gallery presents from this Thursday, April 29, in an exclusively online exhibition, the new work of Javier de Juan. 18 pieces of acrylic on paper in which the artist, in an exercise of freedom and searching among the folds of the subconscious, rescues characters from the biblical stories of his childhood. The exhibition ESCRITURAS arises almost by chance.

With a very personal and recognizable voice and a splendid command of drawing and color, Javier de Juan became one of the most present and active authors in the field of drawing and painting during the prodigious decade of the eighties. Javier has managed to maintain a coherent and constantly evolving artistic career, always preserving his most characteristic creative identity traits. He is a splendid draftsman, with an innate ability to tell stories through images. His technique is fresh, agile, clear and simple. With few lines and graphics he is able to construct scenes, situations, moments and of course emotions. His characters, men and women, are always recognizable and are animated by a special liveliness, full of energy, registers, movements and also sensuality. The current Pandemic has meant, among other things, the suspension and paralysis of numerous artistic projects, and consequently the awareness of artists about the need to consider new strategies, and new ways of expression. A kind of personal and professional "reset". Javier de Juan's case was no different. After the hard lockdown in Madrid, he settled down for the past summer in a coastal location 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 avenues of creation and, more importantly, with the determined plan of not having any plan. Letting the pure pleasure of painting - an elixir that is increasingly less consumed by many painters - fill his days and nights.

And so, without applying any filter of sketch, idea or intention, a series of new images began to emerge in the studio, as if by the magic of art, which nevertheless also carried within them aromas already known, almost familiar. The figures and compositions that emerged from the paper, as if they were the children of the gesture and the stroke of his hand, did so at the same time as emblems of his memory. It is curious, but absolutely true, that in the closet of our memories there can coexist things as unsuspected as those stories - which they told us were sacred - taken from the biblical trunk of the Old Testament, and which they told us at school, during religion classes. I must confess, without any shame, that I loved those stories of heroes, battles, epics, deaths and sex, yes, you heard correctly, sex too... In this way, two men fighting can stage the eternal fraternal struggle between Cain and Abel, or beautiful and sensual girls can become Delilah and Judith.

Javier de Juan now proposes ESCRITURAS, his new exhibition project, which, from its very title, gives off obvious biblical aromas, but which also emphasizes his particular use of phrases and words, and which undoubtedly add a rich narrative and textual dimension to his proposal.

Text Francisco Carpio