‘THE LEGACY OF WATER’ 16 WORKS OF RECENT CREATION, MADE SPECIFICALLY FOR THE OLSEN GALLERY IN SIDNEY

The exhibition will be on view from January 19 to February 5, 2022. ‘The Legacy of Water’ is my third exhibition in Australia, but this time it is my first solo show in Sydney. A dream come true and a success for my team, where I would especially like to highlight the curator of this exhibition, the Australian art manager Kate Smith.

The last exhibition curated by Kate was at the iconic Sydney Opera House. On that occasion, it was already an honor to be part of the selected artists. And I thank her very much for her words towards my work: “I have represented, collected and exhibited Spanish contemporary artist Jose Luis Puche for several years. Throughout  this time I have always been in awe of the evolution of his extraordinary draughtsman based story telling images”.

“Jose possess a unique skill marrying beautiful expressive colour with a fine art element of exquisite portraiture.  There are underlying surreal figurative elements to be interpreted by the viewer but all are evidence of a unique beauty and power in all his works”.

16 new works guided by the pleasure and transforming power of water

‘The Legacy of Water’ is composed of 16 new works made during 2021, with my technique oil charcoal, oil pastel and colored pencil on Saunders Waterford paper.

There is no common thread – either narrative or conceptual – in these pieces, where pleasure reigns supreme. Immersed in a time of pandemic that is still far from being over, the first emotional setback suffered and experienced by my generation has led me to reflect on the importance or otherwise of what surrounds us in life, on what is important and what is superfluous, on the very existence of life.

In my work, water is the driver that transforms everything, the driver of my drawings, created by water splashing and pounding the paper, occasionally with some violence, as nothing new can exist without the material and visual onslaught of what had formerly been there. Water nourishes us, connects continents and begets life, even beyond the confines of our planet, in the universe, where water might be a sign of life.

Thus, water applied to drawing can be understood as the last communicative language, from constructive and procedural sketching to its transformation into artistic matter, according to how the water has fallen upon the charcoal and the paper, how it might organically drip down, tracing its own furrows, rivers and tributaries, dragging down all the matter along its course until whatever is not meant to be part of the work has dripped onto the ground. What is left behind, by way of evidence, of the action, the drive and the force is the legacy that water leaves on the work, what infuses life and existence to it.

These works are reflections on victory, light, magic, unsettling landscapes and objects that quietly connect with the observer, an array of situations that rather than belong to the realm of images, actually pertain to the eye of the beholder, who arranges and interprets them – based on his or her past experience – in order to grant the observer’s very own and even intimate sense to every one of the works.

Although for reasons of the pandemic I couldn’t travel to the opening I invite you to know it through this gallery of images…