Javier Peñafiel

Over the last few years of indecisive artistic activity, the various conceptual changes that have been astonished by us have served, among other things, to show how the fundamental statements of what we have repeatedly described as mum as three-dimensional devices have proved to be highly effective when it comes to establishing not only a more or less complex creative model of creative practice that is liberated from the already closed borders of its own initial denomination - sculpture - but, above all, a productive way of great force to show what are the implications of the artist, the creator, his own generic past and his experience of subject, both with a direct construction of more or less allegorical presences as well as with the " Use of more or less metaphorical objects, while avoiding, in both cases, the idea of ​​excessive recreation in the aspects f Ormals of the work, in their (practically) formalistic qualities and, instead, placing a greater emphasis on the indefugible conceptual proximity that works have - must have it - with the most experimental and existential fields of the ' Artist, thinking that, in some way, and returning the other way around the same journey done before, it is virtually the work itself that ends up giving shape to the artist's experience, which ends up configuring these states of the mind and the consciousness that are formulated in a specific material way in the artist's workshop.

Javier Peñafiel, like some other artists of the last generations, offers his three-dimensional experience as a part of his existential experience, that is, thinking and producing the work of art as a fundamental aspect of his vital career , almost suggesting that the works could be part of a hypothetical tool or personal instrument with which to travel every time they change their home, with which to move each time one moves, both physically and emotionally, as a sort of furniture or clothing inseparable from vicissitudes and the existence of the artist, the person, the subject, in short: a repertoire of works that ultimately forms another meaning of the approach of the art referred to to a new idea of ​​the subject and his role not only as a creative agent but even as a spectator. And an idea of ​​sculpture, in fact, and that is now a matter of direct interest, like the day after, as in the morning afterwards, as after having woken up early one morning and having to start a dialogue with them objects of the environment and with the own global situation that has occurred so far, preparing the subsequent events that seem to have taken place so far, preparing the subsequent events that seem to have been produced irremediably throughout the day, throughout the rest of the journey, of its trajectory.

Apparently, and bearing in mind this forceful instrumental possibility, it is as if the sculpture by Javier Peñafiel was portable, not just more or less easily transportable, but directly portable, that is, portable over one, above, almost as part of oneself, an orthopedic, a prosthesis, as an instrumental deployment that travels with us wherever we are going, as if we were, ourselves and pieces, the artist and the pieces, in a kind of permanent state of move : uncertainty, fragility, balance, fears, desires, last attempts to gauge the temperature of others as a system of personal knowledge, as a method of approach to the same viewer, a specific system that the artist finds particularly effective and, above all , suggestive, as if it were to define the possibility of a new model of relationship with the rest of humanity.

Although Javier Peñafiel's works do not directly constitute an inquiry into questions related to the inevitable dynamism of the traditional schemes present in three-dimensional activities - which, if raised now, would not be, on the other hand, nothing more than an excess Reducing and empowering, every time that is remarkably overcome, we can mention, albeit in passing, some of its fundamental points, because they place some of the axes of their speech and make it possible to open themselves to new three-dimensional episodes of Most remarkable resonance: it gives the idea of ​​sculpture a broad meaning relating it both to the memory and the structure, both with finding it and with construction, both with allegory and with the metaphor, both with the intimacy as well as the public, both with the private body and with the social fabric, reaffirming this kind of sense as a projection outside, towards the outside, that all work it contains the ultimate reason to be of any artistic object projected to the public sphere from the fields of an inalienable privacy that is increased precisely from these contributions, both from the artist and the viewer, that is, reaching maximum intensity in its public display.

In fact, these last works by Javier Peñafiel state that any work of art implies the constitution - or construction - of a kind of artistic place: a territory in which both the uncertainties of thought and the determinations that formalize by means come together of creation, a place in which clearly shows that idea of ​​another artist according to which, in order to speak of the complexity of the idea of ​​art, it is necessary to speak of the complexity of the idea of ​​world, of existence, that is to say , of an individual. To speak, therefore, of the definition of art we should speak of the definition of man: every artistic place implies the opening of a world in which the individual can make their experience, the experience of singular, posing In circulation the new formulations of the modern subject, experiencing their constitutions, extending them to other territories of thought and making their uniqueness become wider and more open, making it validate extensively towards others immersed subjects, like him, in the attainment of a principle of identity: the subject thus refutes, therefore, validates the unique experience and expands the original formulation. And this is, in some sense, one of the main tasks of art: placing itself in the peripheral boundaries of his own discourse, is continuously reflected towards the center, it is linked to it and returns to us as an element that does not it only provides the image of the present but is constituted in those voices of the path of celanian orchards, from its margins rewrites the behavior models and their emancipatory anxieties and of the future makes possible a rigorous approach not only formal to its characteristics foundational It is structured as a place of passage in which vestiges are ordered as fragments.

Javier Peñafiel's current works - some of which have been built based on the specific proposal of his exhibition - constitute a powerful example of a certain idea of ​​art as a vestige, like the rest of a passage , of a mental operation whose power leaves signals, an identifiable sign even in the same presentation of the works. We are faced with works that not only reaffirm the conceptual complexity of one's own existence in the world but finally end up revealing a progressive tendency to establish relations with the environment through the fields of the experimental to the ends of a kind of tangibility, of a physicality that affects both the aspects of its formalization and the idea of ​​the spaces for the perception of the works and, in short, their own areas of reception and understanding. Its configuration, ultimately, reveals a remarkable -and dearly sought-after-lack of style, as if the idea of ​​desire would mark different milestones in function only of its specificity, such as that terrible dark night that carries The light looks for a unique and different objective every time, devoid to satisfy your wishes.