Jerónimo Elespe: Palinodia

"Palinodia" is Jerónimo Elespe's (Madrid, 1975) new and second exhibition at LABOR. It takes its name from the lyrical art of taking one’s own words back, a title that references the many changing points in Elespe’s production. Large, vertical paintings, the biggest paper pieces yet, and an explosion of color rarely seen in his previous work, hang throughout the gallery's walls.

Elespe's palinodes are already part of his artistic practice, his paintings, both made out of paper and of aluminum, are formed by multiple layers of materials that have been added, removed, diluted, or covered, partially or totally by others. Palimpsests are created in narratives whose sources and references, regardless of their origin, are indistinctly part of the artist’s intimate experience and from where the personal and subjective resist the collective as the dominant structure.

The emphasis on process, materiality, and the different visual languages used, allows the artist to continuously search for open-ended results while suggesting his indifference towards an outcome. In this sense, Elespe’s proposal acquires a philosophical dimension regarding the non-linearity of time and the complexity of life experience through semi-transparent, fluctuating, and hypnotic surfaces, which are seductive in the sense that one can only try to decipher what is not absolute.