The Italian expression “se non é vero, é ben trovato” seems to refer to the work of Javier Ruiz. If this landscape is not true, it is well found. Suddenly, a hitherto unknown place, a hitherto unimagined situation, is presented to the public as the reflection of memory.

For Javier, painting is not simply a means, but part of the end. Once inside it, something that seemed to have been dormant for some time reappears with the force of memory in oil. Javier Ruiz’s imagery starts from some internal but unconscious or, rather, silent place or moment. The images emerge from the paradox: from ignorance, a language of his own is generated in which Javier is sincere with himself. Therefore, his work oscillates between truth and lies. While he paints he asks himself: “Maybe behind all this, there is nothing but emptiness”. However, his work functions as an exercise in self-exploration, so it would be one of these voids that he fills.

Faceless figures, people out of their context, landscapes that look like reveries… Do the characters face indefinition or do they coexist with it? At the moment of creation, Javier is not fully aware of what he does or represents. This generates an unexpected space in the spectator, a space left to the imagination of the beholder. According to the artist, “to find oneself in total ambiguity is sometimes the only way we have to choose freely what option we want to take. A total sincerity with oneself”.

‘As far as I know’ is the title of the Andalusian artist’s first solo exhibition at the Victor Lope Gallery. In general, all the titles of his paintings describe what is going on in them. ‘As far as I know’ encompasses them all, expressed in the first person as if he were thinking out loud. Javier captures your attention in the small everyday stories that happen to us but are sometimes imperceptible. It could be said that Javier is the narrator of the daily finer things. The every day is sublimated and detail reigns among the mustard and blue tones of nameless landscapes.

María Valcárcel