03 September – 30 September 2022
Cesc Abad is a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist. His works are directly related to nature, especially to the landscape of the Catalan Pyrenees, and, despite being figurative, they all carry a strong conceptual meaning which goes beyond the limits of utopia to enter a dystopian world. The ease with which he covers different disciplines leads him to work with ceramics in a very personal and identifiable manner. He manages to merge painting and sculpture to reflect on man’s relationship with nature, and the relationship of human beings with their passions, their fears and their hopes.
Press release
WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU EXPECT NOTHING?
WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR?
SOMETIMES YOU WAIT FOR SOMEONE, SOMETIMES YOU WAIT FOR A MOMENT
SOMETIMES… YOU HAVE TO CREATE THAT MOMENT.
“I was waiting for you” is a plea to that vital moment in which everything arrives, that longed-for moment, that longed-for why, that longed-for answer to all our questions, that moment of rupture where a new change in the vital paradigm takes place.
The essence of his work comes from the calm and the oxygen of nature in its purest state, his beloved Pyrenees being his muse. It is from this natural environment that a creative process begins, where humanity opens from its most primitive essence.
The overwhelming plasticity that characterises his work floods the works in the exhibition. From ceramics to paintings, all aligned to perfection through his aesthetic eye. Works which move between this sense of nature and the most explicit dystopia, generating with them a vibrant and radiant expression of vitality.
From this vision, from his “clinical eye” to nature, Cesc generates compositional scenes that seem to have been referenced from “messy movies”. Scenes in which black humour, satire and irony are mixed, generating with them grimaces of astonishment and complicity in the spectator.
An intoxicating absurdity full of forests, sensations, nudity and the implacable gaze of the voyeur, inside and outside the works. As spectators, we are confronted with lasciviousness, passions, tragedies and fears. A series of works susceptible to Freudian analysis in which the scenes become addictive food for those who observe them.
From this precious fable, a series of portraits appear in this exhibition for the first time, the product of dreams and illusions, new protagonists that, like “chimeras”, are made up of natural elements, wood and stones that claim their humanity by becoming corporeal.
I was waiting for you is above all a great reflection on the life of us and of the artist. Lives that remind us never to stop looking for the way, because… few truths in creation are so profound as “when the search is over, the way is over”.
Victoria Rivers
Bio:
Cesc Abad (Terrassa, Barcelona, 1973) is an artist who wholly understands that the possibilities of the path are infinite. Self-taught and multidisciplinary, Cesc’s creative process spans more than twenty years but has been bound to the strictest of secrecies. Fulfilling his family responsibilities, Cesc has led a double life, managing the family business while at the same time giving free rein to his vital impulse from the strictest anonymity.
He built an impassable wall in his office, which his colleagues nicknamed “the wall” in mockery, and in the intimacy of his process he has created a unique and imaginary world in which nature and passions mingle in a rich universe: painting, ceramics, photography, video..
After several years of this double life, Cesc made the decision to put aside his business life and dedicate himself entirely to his creation and artistic career. In the recent years his work has been exhibited internationally and included by important private and museum collections. Recent. And upcoming exhibitions include Simchowitz gallery, LA ; Caelis gallery, Shangai and Mayoral gallery. Paris.