Edu Carrillo’s solo exhibition at the JPS gallery proposes an X-ray of the painter’s craft. It could even be said that it is an analysis of painting. However, caution is called for: painting is always a problem.
The canvases that Carrillo brings together in this project are precise and direct snapshots of the act of painting in a period of great intensity and almost feverish production. The artist wants to investigate in depth the anatomy of painting, what is inside and underneath its surface. But he does not want to discover it, much less demonstrate it from a theoretical or discursive point of view, but from practice. His research goes through painting, canvas after canvas, spending countless hours in the studio waiting for a short-circuit, lingering for the arrival of a wound in the painting. Something uncertain, a kind of opening that the painter himself cannot foresee but which sometimes, rarely, happens and raises other fundamental questions: Will he recognise and accept the novelty of it? Is he ready for it? Is it the right moment to change lanes? More problems…
This exhibition is Carrillo’s invitation to visit his studio without an appointment. There he lets himself be surprised by the surrounding tools of his trade: a tube of paint, a paintbrush-knife, a canvas… Or, while he takes a certain distance from what he is doing, before starting again; while he looks and thinks on a chair. Thinking and looking can become synonymous.
This exhibition project proposes a collection of samples, a personal encyclopaedia, about painting. A 360-degree panoramic view from the centre of the studio that freezes, like an X-ray of Edu Carrillo’s current practice. The point where he is in his obsessive research. His dedication, bare-chested, to painting. His absolute dedication to the painter’s craft.
In Edu Carrillo’s work, themes such as love, break-up, magic and fantasy, music, friendship, dance and nature envelop his canvases and drawings. Through primitive gestures and vivid colour palettes, the artist generates a universe where the characters are carefully dressed in the most trendy contemporary fashions, such as the skater style influenced by the 90s. The sense of energy that the works instil in the viewer reveals the artist’s intention to represent light-hearted and naïve scenes that encourage us to experience the fluidity of forms and flee from the premeditated.
JPS Gallery (Hong Kong)
Hong Kong, Central, Queen’s Road Central, 15號Shops 218-219, 2/F, Landmark Atrium
