SLEEPWALKERS

MEPAINTSME is pleased to present Spanish artist Joseba Eskubi’s first solo exhibition of paintings with the gallery. As the show’s title suggests, ‘sleepwalking’ could aptly describe the painting process itself, where the conscious and unconscious merge — where the intentioned action of the artist and the unintended result happen simultaneously in any given moment. The paintings of Joseba Eskubi begin and end in this state, where the forms themselves are in a perpetual state of becoming.

Resisting classification, these peculiar semblances suggest a multitude of figurative readings that tease our desire to make sense of them. Like some amorphous matter in an embryonic stage, these objects could be interpreted as the embodiment of rational thought and irrational material form consolidating in real time, an unconscious event made plastic, playing out on a baroque stage outside the subject's will. That isn’t to say that clues don’t exist of their conception. Within each form lies its genetic phylogeny that challenges the viewer to unlock its hidden codes. From the beautiful, yet grotesque, fleshiness of Peter Paul Rubens or brushy Impasto of Picasso’s Harlequins, to the ambiguous luminosity of Francisco Goya, these figurative amalgams of art history are forever elusive in their concreteness; and yet their ambiguity hastens our desire to make sense of them. 

As the show opens and the curtain rises, the artist directs his amorphous forms to perform like actors on a stage. But unlike most theatre productions, this audience eagerly anticipates the poeticism of the unexpected more than scripted soliloquies. As we watch this cast of bizarre players stumble about or float in the air, we understand Eskubi’s direction is closer in spirit to Alfred Jarry than to Shakespeare. As did Jarry’s Ubu Roi baffle and offend audiences with its unruliness on its premiere on December 10, 1896 (its first and last performance), Eskubi manages to create his very own provocative theatre of the mind, bestowing forms morphing into new forms, stretching their bulbous limbs into psychic spaces, where costumed primordial masses sleepwalk along ancient seas and barren skies.