What inspired you to create art and become an artist? (events, feelings, experiences…)

My relationship with art is purely vocational; In my case, it was not the typical situation where parents sign you up to give drawing classes, and you learn to draw; it was the opposite; My parents were able to see very well that I was always drawing and scribbling things on paper and that is when they wanted to promote this early vocation.

What is your artistic background, the techniques and subjects you have experimented with so far?

In the en dI have always said that painting is learned by painting. If you’re lucky, you find a couple of teachers who mark you and know how to guide you well, respecting your peculiarities, but this is not easy at all. I studied with several professors, such as the watercolorist Aurora Charló, who was a reference for me, especially in the use of color, and later I studied at the Zaragoza School of Arts. Regarding the techniques and experimentation, every day, with each painting, I always try to do something new, things that an untrained eye may not be able to see, but that make my processes always very fun and not at all monotonous. I do exactly the same as Miquel Barceló did when he made the gigantic clay mural for the cathedral of Mallorca, in Spain, he said that every day he played at doing a totally different thing, so he came to work with clay in many ways, even putting on boxing gloves and punching.

What are the 3 aspects that differentiate you from other artists, making your work unique?

I think there is only one aspect that sets me apart from other artists, and makes my work unique; that I am the one doing it, and I do it in the most honest way possible. As Dalí said, “If Velazquez copies a photograph to the best of his ability, he gets a Velazquez”. And this is because his honesty speaks through his painting.

Where does your inspiration come from?

For my art and life are absolutely inseparable. Inspiration comes from your relationship with life; In my case, the trips I’ve made, all the places I’ve lived, or the people I’ve met along the way, have been guiding and taking my painting from one place to another. Austria gave me confidence in myself and in my work, as Picasso said when talking about Barcelona, “That’s where I understood how far I could go”, New York faded the fear of solving certain lines, gave me spontaneity, or the Canary Islands, to name a few places where I have lived, gave me a different light and a yellow.

Bailaora

Oil on Canvas, 195 x 150 cm

What is your artistic approach? What visions, sensations or feelings do you want to evoke in the viewer?

Normally I don’t care about the sensation that a spectator will have when contemplating my work, for me the relationship with painting is much more personal, more intimate, I care about the sensations that it generates in the process, and the satisfaction of knowing when to finish a work; and that there is another one waiting for me right after. It is true, that with series like “Iptics” or my work “Overdose” that I presented at the Biennale Personal Structures in Venice last year, I do want to generate an interaction with the viewer, making them part of the game in which they have to look for the forms that appear in the titles of the works, in apparently abstract paintings.

What is the process of creating your work? Spontaneous or with a long preparatory process (technical, inspiration from art classics or other)?

Normally I usually face the canvas without knowing what I am going to do, the work is being done little by little. Lately, even the colors are telling me what color they want to have next, it’s a very organic and fun process. I have works, like those in my “Crowds” series, that are absolutely spontaneous and others in which I think about what I’m going to do. When this happens, I spend many hours in front of the painting, just thinking.

Do you use a particular work technique? if so, can you explain it?

A rather particular technique that I use is blurring, normally of the backgrounds; almost like a photographic lens does, and in this way I can zoom in and out of things that interest me from one plane or another. I do this technique using my fingers, or a very soft brush, insisting a lot on the borders of one color with another.

Are there any innovative aspects in your work? Can you tell us which ones?

I think that I am not the one who should answer this question, and I also believe that you have to know my work very well from the beginning to be able to understand these small “innovations” that arise from the evolution at work. In my relationship with Cubism, (not focused on the traditional interpretation of an object from different points of view, but from an exclusively formal, geometric point of view), in this context a contribution appears in my work that consists of returning the perspective to “formally cubist” painting by means of out-of-focus, that is, without using any of the traditional means in the field of perspective, only bringing back or forth the different pictorial planes.

Afterhours

Oil on Linen, 200 x 235 cm

Do you have a format or medium that you are most comfortable with? if yes, why?

Undoubtedly my favorite medium is oil, since it provides a versatility that other techniques cannot give you: let’s say that it is the most complete. Although I like to play with many techniques to bring nuances to my works, I use acrylics in the bases, waxes and oil pastels to draw on the paint, as I learned watching “Rush hour” by Condo. Regarding the formats, I really like large formats, more than 3 meters, although I also like variety, and I usually rest from large works, with other much smaller ones, barely 50 x 65 cm

Where do you produce your works? At home, in a shared workshop or in your own workshop? And in this space, how do you organize your creative work?

For several years now, I have lived in a studio-home format in the last places in the world where I have lived, in Berlin, London, the Canary Islands and now, in Madrid. I need very high ceilings to be able to carry out large works. So, answering your question, we could say that I live in my workshop. I work every day (in fact, my favorite day to work is Sunday), in a continuous creative environment without disconnection, very demanding but very enriching.

Does your work lead you to travel to meet new collectors for fairs or exhibitions? If so, what does it bring you?

Yes, in recent months I have traveled a lot, I had my first individual exhibition in South Korea (Seoul) and I have also exhibited at the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona. The experience of traveling to Seoul was incredible, it is a totally different culture and getting to know it has influenced me a lot. In fact, I painted as soon as my work “Korea” arrived, and I don’t rule out making any other of the hundreds of photographs I took of traditional Korean art.

How do you imagine the evolution of your work and your career as an artist in the future?

I am in a very good moment in my career, in many aspects, but I know that I still have a long way to go. My work will evolve, sure, and we’ll see where. There are many ideas in my head, and I have to get them out little by little.

What is the theme, style or technique of your latest artistic production?

I vary a lot from one work to another, in general terms we could say that I have a neo-figurative line of work and an abstract one, although I have not completely abandoned figuration in my abstraction. I don’t work in “usual” series, but rather I make works over the years, which organize themselves, as Juan Uslé would say, in families.

TOO MUCH

Oil on Linen, 200 x 200 cm

Can you tell us about your most important exhibition experience?

I have several exhibitions that come to mind, and I can’t choose just one: The Personal Structures Biennale in Venice in 2022, the realization of “Lampedusa” at the Museo Centro de Historias in Zaragoza in 2017, the retrospective I did at the Orus Museum In 2013, with more than 70 works, my individual exhibitions in New York, or this one that I mentioned before in Korea also made me very excited.

If you could have created a famous work in the history of art, which one would you choose? And why?

It is very difficult to choose just one among so many wonders that have been done; maybe I would take again “Rush Hour” by George Condo again because of what it meant for me to see it for the first time, everything I was looking for in painting I suddenly found materialized in this work: abstraction and figuration, painting and drawing together in the same canvas and with a harmony that I had never seen before. I would also have liked to paint “Je Revois en Souvenir ma Chère Udnie” by Picabia, it is one of the works that has impressed me the most in my life, I saw it on my first visit to MoMA, and I was amazed… even more than seeing the magnificent “Les demoiselles d’avignon”.

If you could invite one famous artist (dead or alive) to dinner, who would it be? How would you suggest he spend the evening?

I would almost prefer that the one dining in front of me was alive, for a matter of salubrity, but omitting this, and at this moment in my life at 40 years old, I think I would love to diner with Picasso, but a Picasso already in his time mature. He seems like an unrepeatable artist to me and I’m sure he was a lot of fun too. I would have loved to be at that moment when Picasso went to pay for all his friends’ food with a drawing, the waiter was delighted, of course, and when he asked him to sign the drawing, he replied: “I want to pay for the food, not buy the restaurant “