JORGE QUIJANO AHIJADO

Interview

Artikel

Quijano, in an attempt to reveal the identity of contemporary man, to penetrate the ultimate and intimate essence of modern man, makes the dehumanising process, the physical and psychological dislocation, the unfathomable depth visible.
Ultimately, these Works are authentic interiors which invite the viewer to reflect on what we really are in this world of constant turmoil. They form an intimist album of the man’s fate.

- Domingo Aira

 

The optical illusion becomes the argument of the whole work of Jorge Quijano, the appearance, the unknown, the aesthetic instant, the manifestation of the being in the physical characteristics of women or himself. The relation between the I and those that surround and observe me, the idealization of the unknown, of that what we turn into unattainable, resulting more attractive, more interesting. An exaltation of the anonymity, of the illusionist character of the painting, of the magic, which appears and disappears by means and action of the spectator, with whom he plays and imagines.

- Cristina Martinez García

 

It seems to us that finding the centre of one’s own psyche, guided by one’s own vibration, is one of the fundamental aspects of Jorge Quijano’s art. He invites us through his work, which takes great inspiration from the new technologies, to a change in our level of consciousness, to the creation of a new identity that is likely to transform humankind. Jorge has confessed that since he was seven years old he has been able to see light particles on the walls. He only has to look at the stone or block to see them shining in all their luminescence, an extra sensorial expression of the electronic field of our space and time, and the spontaneous enjoyment of the song of matter-energy radiation. It is not surprising that the artist, who has started with what at the end of the day is a traditional representation of the portrait, has taken this face to a wider context. This is the immersion in the omnipresent ocean of energies that pass right through it, some of them from the limits of known cosmos.

- Dr. Martine Pasquet
Art Modern Museum, Ville de Paris

 

The works of Jorge Quijano-Ahijado act like those lures made of light which entice moth. The onlooker comes near the pictures, fluttering about, hovering around. His melancholic first impression fades away and gives place to a pleasant feeling of tipsiness. It’s because he perceives suddenly something rare and important. He sees the advent of form, or, more precisely, as Paul Klee has said, not form but formation, as “it is the move which is productive, the main point.” 1
In Jorge Quijano-Ahijado’s works one can see images in progress; reflections appearing just as they are, illusory; and the question of visibility itself subtly brought in action.

- Nathalie Reymond
Arts Plastiques et Sciences de l’Art
Paris 1 University (Pantheon-Sorbonne)

1 Paul Klee. Théorie de la’art moderne. Paris. Ed. Gonthier. Coll. Médiations. 1964. P.62

 

In the portraits of Jorge Quijano Ahijado, these elements converg. The faces before us drip with strangeness. At times the women’s faces appear disfigured, transmitting the pain and secrecy that belongs to them, and that can in some way become ours-if we choose to acknowledge it. The violence of their anonymity remains, but through our gaze, our own identity is transformed, as suddenly we are connected inextricably to each woman upon whose face we look. The sounds accompanying (by Silvia Argüello) those faces ring like the poet Walt Witman’s “Song of myself”, celebrating the unique pulses and tones that comprise each individual’s identity.
In the end, the portrait of each woman is not meant to appear transparently, but rather diaphanously like the sounds and colours that reconstruct their identity; and their faces – which become a revelation for us – have the power to illuminate our own faces the burning bush.

- Ananda Robinson
Harvard University

 

The women’s faces are transformed into aqueous residue on the canvas; disturbing faces that express the loss of identity of beings in our society. The young women photographed appear to be disfigured and are like spectres or residues (traces) of life who transmit the full pain of the metamorphosis. According to Antonin Artaud, these women wear “a kind of perpetual death on their faces”.

- J.M. MUSAC