It is to go against the host of enigma. When embarrassing visibility is imposed, when Chat GPT has answers for everything, replicating with intelligent ambiguity, providing antidotes against the topic is another way of synchronizing this time. It is one of the … attitudes that should thank an artist. Something we can thank you for Javier Peñafiel (Zaragoza, 1964).
It is not easy to explain to an adoptive child of the Sphinx. Has merit for it Diana Padrón, Commissioner of this individual in Teruel. “Peñafiel,” he tells us, “interrogates the viewer without demanding a single answer.” The exhibition, in the Teruel Museum, During the paradoxes, he will interest both who he knows and whoever does not know the author.
It serves to make visible the last of his (his proposals for the Cairo Biennial) and as an emergency anthological. To their fans (curious club) will satisfy themselves with ‘abuse’, 1999 video, or with that ‘alter ego’ imagined towards 1997, ‘egolactant’.
It is difficult to think about a more subtle allegation against violence than ‘abuse’, with that fixed plane of shot flowers. And difficult to find a better generational reference than ‘egolactant’, graphic, metamorphic, digital and analogical creature that represents the “premature loss of childhood” and “adult insistence on infantilism.” I would like to rescue what he said, in this regard, José L. Brea: “There are no melodramas or tragicomedias, but an exquisitely weighted ‘script’ of micro -stories.”
From top to bottom, clothing for ‘egolactant’; ‘The sphigie prefers you’, a piece that gives title to the proposal; and ‘opposite voice’ (2010)
That abandonment of tragicomedy, a certain commitment to lightness, between Duchamp and Italo Calvino, Characterize Peñafiel. It belongs to a group of artists who began to travel in the ninety new land, where old issues, such as disciplines, are diluted. I think of people like Jordi Colomer, Alberto Peral… More than a Barcelona ecosystem, his has been cosmopolitan. Airport artist.
The sculpture or the object were in the beginning. Like that dialogue between two vacuum bags, moderated by an ear plug. There is talk here about gaps and silence. The models of Bados or Tuttle, But more and more, the theater. The type of work that identifies Peñafiel will be the ‘Confedrama’, where he joins ‘performance’, theatrillo, writing, production or appropriation of objects. Their facilities become debris of those staging, mild parodies of the total work of art, which we will also know in their videos. In Teruel we can sit down to see a good selection, Adding the recording of the ‘Confedrama’ that starred there, at the inauguration.
Another virtue of this artist is to add accomplices. Teresa Terrán Create the ‘egolactant’ costumes. Adolf Alcañiz It is usually behind your videos. Àlex Grifeu He is the macker of his publications and, specifically, that of the very curious they have created for this occasion. A review of its ‘Confedrams’.
Javier Peñafiel
‘The Sphinx prefers you.’ Teruel Museum. Teruel. Fray Anselmo Polanco Square, 3. Commissioner: Diana Padrón. Until April 27. Four stars.
On the multiplicity of records, something that resembles the ghost of a ‘style’ is Peñafiel’s calligraphy. Their lyrics lengthen, they seem musical notes, the holes are filled. This writing easily becomes a drawing, character, and gives rise to ‘egolactant and family’. Half joking, we find one of the most interesting cartoonists. Lately, Peñafiel sows all of papers (actually, facial wipes), with paradoxical epigrams, such as the one that gives title to the appointment: ‘The Sphinx prefers you’.
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