“When the Greeks claimed that all knowledge was a form of recollection, they meant by this that all existence—that is, what now exists—had already existed before. In contrast, when it is said that life is a repetition, what is meant is that existence—that is, what has already existed—begins to exist again now”

Kierkegaard, Soren. Repetition. Alianza Editorial. Madrid. 2009

I remember that, a long time ago, during a conversation with Manolo Quejido in his studio in Madrid, while chatting about the pictorial, we spoke about the times and ways of working in the studio and discussed the importance of the think-paint or paint-think dichotomy: “It’s all the same, because painting is the same as thinking and thinking is the same as painting,” he told me.

I am not and do not want to be a painter (what a responsibility!), and at the very moment I’m working with paint, I don’t feel like I’m thinking yet, but rather doing something else—though not painting. I think about the piece long before I bring it into being and also after I stop working on it. Linking Quejido’s argument to my own perception, one could say that I paint before I reach for the canvas and paint and also after I set them aside, but not at the moment of creation itself.

This body of work has emerged from a slow, unhurried process. I have been working in the small format for quite some time now. At first, this was due to the constraints imposed by the limited space in which I worked. Later, even after that limitation had disappeared, the process had already become a dynamic one, and I remain captivated by the intensity of the minimal.

I should explain that the relationship between memory and repetition is usually present in my work in one form or another, and in these pieces this connection is translated into the formal: fundamentally into the gestures and ways of doing, into the various movements necessary to ultimately apply or remove the paint from the support, forming a sort of choreography necessary for the production of each series or work.

This is the case, for example, in Vertical Choreography: Now Yes (to Marina), a series that addresses the grieving process triggered by the death of my father, who always told me that my pieces needed more color. Many years after his passing, I set out to create a series in which only that color he once rejected exists, and, as a form of repetition (almost a punishment), I apply the brushstrokes from top to bottom on each and every piece; these are ultimately arranged horizontally, thus forming a sort of horizon, our visual limit, which by definition we never reach no matter how far we advance.

The same applies to various series, such as *Erodere*, in which layers of paint are worn away; *Barrueco*, in which the pieces appear distorted; and *Efémera*, in which the support is built up with impasto.

Many of these pieces explore issues inherent to the discipline itself: the superimposition of layers, chromatic balance, structural elements (the frame, the canvas, the wood, or the paint itself), the very process of painting and unpainting... These elements constitute the formal syntax of these works and series, within which, on many occasions, each piece emerges from the previous one and takes a small step toward another place.

That is why I know that even though we do not always do so, painting does think of us at all times, and I am certain that the pieces, during the creative process, are much freer than our own ideas: a complete mystery—we still have not discovered what it is that makes even the same works appear different depending on the moment, the day, or the season, provoking very different sensations and responses. Manolo used to tell me: “...otherwise, art would be a ride on a city bus.”

Juan López (Ferrol, 1974)

The binomial memory-repetition and performativity give cohesion to my works.

I look for the simplest way, trying not to formally limit myself when solving each piece, to ask questions that recontextualize the viewer/actor by placing him in a new situation from which to look at others and himself.

I try to make each work capable of generating different points of view about the social, proposing questions about the ideas of community, character, union, cohesion or representativeness, but also, in turn, about the ideas of differentiation, dysfunction or abandonment.