PAINTING BEYOND PAINTING. A conversation between BreixoViejo and Adrián Navarro                                                                                                                                                Texto en español                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Breixo Viejo  Right now you’re working on two sets of works. On the one hand, pictures in which the images appear framed in an oval; on the other, a series of four paintings of spheres.

Adrián Navarro  Both sets are the main feature of my most recent exhibition, which I call ‘Implosion’. The satisfaction of these works arises from finding a pictorial space that is independent from the orthogonal architecture of painting.  In the ovals, the observer maintains a cinemascopic experience with the work, through the presence of the frame which, instead of being rectangular, is curved. I’m interested in maximising the vision from afar of the picture, reaffirming the illusory condition of painting. However, the function of these frames or windows is to precipitate the observer’s vision into the pictorial space, absorbing and channelling it towards the interior of the picture. The Spheres are a step closer to the three-dimensional experience. The painting is trapped inside a virtual container: a weightless, spherical volume. The distance between the observer and the work becomes irretrievable, in other words, the observer remains literally outside the realm of the painting. Perhaps in a slightly ironic way. After all, what is the pictorial space like? It’s a sphere. Observing the world is a circular experience…

“Implosion is the process by which objects are destroyed collapsing upon themselves, concentrating matter and energy”.                                                        

Invited by the Hammerson’s Emerging Artist Initiatitive, artist Adrian Navarro presents his second solo show in London, “Implosion”, a series of works combining painting and screen-printing on canvas, the outcome of a process which also involves installation, photography and the digital post-production of images.

Adrián Navarro COMMON PEOPLE

ADA STREET GALLERY , October 2008

Artist Adrian Navarro presents a new series of works combining painting and screen-printing on canvas at the exhibition Common People which will take place at Ada Street Gallery. In contrast to his previous work, the outcome of intimate studio-based painterly activity, the Common People paintings are individual and group portraits of urban character which arise from the artist’s direct contact with the city of London.

Catalogue of the exhibition at UBS Bank, Adrián Navarro, Galaxia, Landaluce&Navarro Editores, Madrid, 2007.                                                                                                                                                             Texto en español 

"I do writing, not stories": Dashiell Hammet used to say and what he says may spring to mind on seeing Adrian Navarro's new paintings. It's something that goes back a long way (or that comes from afar: Adrian's paintings have always travelled): since the very beginning, in the spirit of Hammet's defiant words, his work has stretched between figure and background, line and colour, narrative and form. It's as if Adrian in his own way resolves the dilemma implicit in Hammet's words: paint paintings, and forget the stories.

 Catalogue of the exhibition at UBS Bank, Adrián Navarro, Galaxia, Landaluce&Navarro Editores, Madrid, 2007.                                                                                                                                                              Texto en español

A succession of words on Adrian Navarro's early paintings.

Painting, as an expression of life, is organic and expansive by nature. It not only reflects life, but it is also imbued with it. It has its own laws of internal transformation, thus, it is autonomous and self-referencing.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Texto en español

Catalogue of the exhibition by Adrián Navarro. Hombres y salvajes, Galería Artificial, Madrid, 2006.                                                                                                                                                                                Texto en español            

"Once, after finishing a picture, I thought I would stop for a while, take a trip, do things -- the next time I thought of this, I found five years had gone by." And more years would go by, and then still others more. In the end de Kooning – it was him who was talking – never did do the things he had pending. He only painted until Alzheimer's finished him. And yet, although it didn't seem like it, although not even he himself realized it, maybe he was on a journey, making the trips that he wanted to make. Around his room: inside the Painting.