Like a transformative natural cycle that evolves into something more, 'Eruption' is the last stage of a pictorial journey that spans over almost ten years. The pieces gathered in this exhibition belong to one of the fundamental series in José Yaque's work, namely, his research on the origin of pigments and the chromatic and formal universe of minerals. Although the project depicts a group of constants that run through the different stages of his telluric paintings: the autonomy of the form, the visceral engagement of the body in the process of image emergence, and the work with the paint layers, through it, we can witness the chromatic and gestural radicalization that would take place around the year 2021.
What in previous pieces was merely a pulsating sensation within the planet's core has now burst forth into the open as an irresistible force of nature. This phenomenon is expressed through color, the abruptness of tonal contrasts, and unrestrained freedom. That, and no other, is the substance of the earth, the substance of painting, a fiery magma in which things do not exist in isolation but also being other things. The "eruption" stages the connection between both levels, the interior and the superficial, and reminds us that life and death are identical modalities of a permanently circular world.
“On one hand, the idea of painting; on the other, the minerals, the substratum of the earth transmitting, like burning magma, the convention of the discipline.”
-Daleysi Moya
- - -
José Yaque (b. in 1985 in Manzanillo, Cuba) studied at "Carlos Enríquez" Professional Academy of Fine Arts in Manzanillo (2005) and the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) in Havana (2011). In 2010 he participated in the first Biennial of Contemporary Art in Portugal and exhibited at Wasps Artists’ Studios, in Glasgow, Scotland. In 2012 he won a residence in Warsaw: in Poland he exhibited in the Zacheta Project Room of the National Gallery of Art in Warsaw as part of the collective exhibition “Fragmentos” and achieved, at the National Gallery of Art Zacheta, his first solo exhibition outside national borders. In 2017, he took part in the collective exhibition of the Cuban Pavilion, in Palazzo Loredan, at the 57th Venice Biennale. He has had solo exhibitions at Galleria Continua, Rome (2020); Colegio de Arquitectos (UNAICC), Havana (2019) ; Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art, Vienna (2019); David Gill Gallery, London (2018); Villa Pacchiani Exhibition Centre, Santa Croce sull´Arno, Pisa (2017); Galleria Continua, Les Moulins, France (2015); Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy (2015); and National Library of Cuba, Havana (2015). He currently lives and works between Havana and Madrid.
