Cosmogonies. Alejandro Botubol. Espacio Valverde, Madrid.
Beyond the carriage entrance of a side street off Madrid’s Gran Via, the Espacio Valverde Gallery hangs over a light-filled courtyard, hosting, in this month of September 2014, the work of Alejandro Botubol (Cadiz, 1979) and his Cosmogonies.
Tiempo infinito
2014, oil on canvas, 91 x 120 cm.
Greek in origin, the etymology of “cosmogony” is divided between cosmos and to be born. It is, then, the answer to the origin of the universe by way of mythic narratives. And so this artist, recently relocated to New York and after an attentive look at American painters such as James Turrell or Matt Connors, takes on the task of explaining to us his particular vision of the origin of the universe, of light, of space, in works of a highly metaphysical content.
Pico de oro. 2013
Oil on canvas, 46 x 55 cm.
“In Botubol’s paintings we expect objects and stories, and we end up finding space and light and time. ‘What vanity painting is, which earns admiration for the resemblance of things that we do not admire in reality’: with that sentence Pascal uttered one of the great foolish remarks in the History of Ideas. But an interesting piece of foolishness, as foolish remarks often are. Botubol plays with it: he does not direct attention toward the resemblance of his painting to its object, but toward the testimony of the object in time. And we marvel along with him before a world steeped in time, the most common and at the same time the most costly of the pigments that he carefully dilutes in his painting” (Javier Montes)
El enlace. 2013.
Oil on canvas, 35 x 45 cm
Queensboro art studio. 2013.
Long Island City, New York.
The road. 2013.
Oil on paper, 76 x 56 cm .
