What are we, what is the human being? This is an age-old question. If it is still relevant, it is because it is still open to new and convincing answers. Many people take for granted the well-known Aristotelian definition of man as a political animal – that is, social: made to live in a certain polis. Still resonating with some force are innumerable figurations of the human, based on Greek tragedy, Christian theology, the humanism of Pico della Mirandola, Shakespearean theatre, the rationalist subjectivism of Descartes, Kantian criticism, Marxist historicism, the various existentialisms of not so distant times, and many other philosophies and systems of thought. Among Nietsche’s provocative geniuses is that of having described us humans as a combination of vegetable and stantigoth.
Several decades ago, Jáuregui returned to the subject of the human, in accordance with his unique vision of art and the world. The fruits of his persistent enquiries in this regard are now in sight: first, his penetrating interpretations of the Mexica tzompantli (a process that is still ongoing, with recent findings in situ, in the Aztec Templo Mayor, in Mexico City); subsequently, the exhibition of 50 oils on canvas and large-format prints, Caras vemos, at the Galería Lumbreras (Bilbao, 2015), and the virtual launch of the series of 10 black and white prints, equally large, Mare rostrum, in 2020.
The artist from Bilbao has continued to excavate the depths of the human and his most recent discovery has been a disturbing vein of images in which humus – that uncertain solidity of what springs from a proto-vital, effervescent, chthonic force, in a perpetual trance of promising life and in constant aspiration for solidity – and the always inapprehensible, uncertain, evanescent imago of phantasmatic entities, merge in an aesthetically fecund way.
The underlying anthropological intuition, in the elaboration of the large-format oil paintings that make up this new collection by Jáuregui, is that we are animals in which the indifferent vitality of humus intermingles with the flimsy corporeality and the dubious display of the ghost. Humus and ghost: that is what we are for Jáuregui and he wants to proclaim this disturbing revelation from the title of this series of paintings: Fant humus.
There is no point in disputing whether the artist is right or wrong in his anthropological disquisitions. What is worth noting is the derivations of his thinking on the level of his proposal and his pictorial work. In these times of confusion and renunciation of the rigours of authentic art, the expressive power of these paintings by Jáuregui is worthy of celebration. Also the artist’s capacity for figurative expression and his skill in the handling of composition and colours, shadows and nuances. The same can be said of the alliance of these attributes with a technical materiality and physical supports in accordance with the required plastic tonality, to account for the pregnant intuitions that are evident in all the works included in the Fant humus catalogue.
Fant Humus. Jesús Jáuregui.
Bilbao. 2022.
óleo y polvo de mármol, 200 x 300 cm.
Texto: Josu Landa.
Jesús Jáuregui
Jesús Jáuregui (Bilbao, 1957) studied at the University of Fine Arts in Bilbao. For more than fifteen years, he has maintained a close relationship of friendship, learning and collaboration with two recognised masters of international contemporary art: Jorge Oteiza and Nestor Basterretxea. With the latter, he collaborated on a series of documentaries for the ETB2 television channel on the cultures of Pre-Columbian America. He also took part in the construction of the monument to the Basque shepherd, a competition in Reno, Nevada. These relationships were of capital importance in a constructivist-oriented training, an aesthetic that would lay the fundamental creative foundation for the years to come.
Jesús Jáuregui has spent more than thirty years dedicated to plastic disciplines such as urban sculpture, large format oil painting, engraving, lithography, scenographic interventions in small experimental theatres, and in master classes on creativity, public staging and plastic treatments of large scale formats in Fine Arts Universities and Colleges of Architects.
Josu Landa
Josu Landa Goyogana (Caracas, 1953), Venezuelan-born philosopher, poet, storyteller and essayist. His philosophical thought revolves around ethics and literature. He currently teaches philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and is a member of the National System of Art Creators. Among his most outstanding works are Más allá de la palabra, the collection of poems Treno a la mujer que se fue con el tiempo, which received the Carlos Pellicer Prize, and the first endogenous novel of the Basque exile, Zarandona. He translated Octavio Paz’s poem Piedra de Sol into Basque.
Project by Jesús Jáuregui
