One of the most unexpected turns in my recent work has been
the incorporation of children’s drawings into my sculpture. As an art teacher
at Lliçà d’Amunt, I spend many hours surrounded by the raw, spontaneous, and
often wildly imaginative marks made by children. What began as simple
observation has slowly become a deliberate dialogue within my own practice.
We live in an era of deep crisis of representation.
Traditional ways of depicting reality feel exhausted, saturated by images, and
disconnected from authentic experience. In this context, my approach to
representation has become increasingly playful — almost childlike. I find in
the uninhibited gesture of children’s drawings a form of freedom and directness
that much contemporary art seems to have lost.
At first glance, nothing could seem more contradictory: the
naive, immediate, and joyful line of a child next to the heavy, scarred, and
existentially charged presence of my reclaimed wood sculptures. One is light
and free of self-consciousness; the other is slow, labored, and full of memory.
And yet, in art, the principle of non-contradiction does not
apply.
The childish drawing does not weaken the seriousness of the
sculpture — it cracks it open. It introduces irony, tenderness, and a kind of
raw honesty. Suddenly, the heavy wooden figure carries within it the ghost of a
child’s hand — a reminder that we are all, at once, complex adults and former
children still trying to make sense of the world through play.
This coexistence has become central to pieces in the Man and
Other Animals series and in some recent heads and figures. The children’s lines
act as another layer in the palimpsest. They remind us that identity is never a
finished construction, but a constant negotiation between different versions of
ourselves — the innocent and the wounded, the playful and the grave.
By allowing these two apparently incompatible languages to
inhabit the same body of work, I am exploring a deeper truth: that in times of
crisis of representation, perhaps the most honest way to represent is through
play.
In art, contradiction is not a problem to solve.
It is a space where life can breathe.
