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Juan Uslé

Soñé que revelabas

Malerei wird zum Kardiogramm

In the series of works collectively titled “Soñé que revelabas” (“I Dreamed that You Appeared”), Juan Uslé (b. Santander, 1954; lives and works in Saro, Spain, and New York) has created one of the most exciting painterly oeuvres of our time. Made in loose succession since 1997, the fifty large-format works (9 ft x 6.7 ft) are what we may call nocturnal paintings or black pictures, painted, as these terms suggest, at night. As he works on them in the silence of his studio, Uslé listens to the pulsing rhythm of the blood in his body. Each heartbeat corresponds to one stroke of the brush, whose placement is to some degree a representation of the physical and mental state the artist is in. Lined up side by side or one beneath the other to form what look like strips of film, the brushstrokes visualize the real time Uslé “consumed” in making the works. They also invite inferences concerning his life: over the years, there are phases or individual paintings in which the colors are brighter and more translucent or isolated lines or dots of color enliven the rigorously monochromatic palette of black and gray. The result is a translation into painting of the artist’s experience of his world and body.

For the first time, the complete “Soñé que revelabas” series is presented in a single publication. With essays by Stephan Berg, Raphael Rubinstein, and Ángel Gonzales as well as a poem by Julio Cortázar.