Spotlight: Spanish Artist Jeronimo Elespe’s Enigmatic Paintings Tap Into Psychology and Dreams. See His Uncanny Visions Here

About the Artist: Madrid-based Spanish artist Jeronimo Elespe (b. 1975) has an artistic practice that transforms facets of everyday life into introspective, often wistful, scenes or abstractions. Inspired by themes rooted in memory, dreams, and the essence of time, Elespe’s work has a mesmeric quality achieved through carefully scaled, and frequently minute, brushwork that coalesces into an impactful whole. Elespe graduated from the School of Visual Arts, New York, with his BFA in 1999, and completed his MFA at Yale University in 2001. His work has been acquired by several notable international institutions, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

What You Need to Know: On view through May 6, 2023, New York gallery Van Doren Waxter is presenting a solo show of Elespe’s recent body of work. The artist’s eponymous exhibition features prints and drawings, as well as a selection of paintings on linen or aluminum supports. The collection of works on view emphasize the dynamic range of mediums Elespe employs in his practice as well as the artist’s deft execution of highly detailed yet subtle compositions. Ranging in size from under six inches to just over four-and-a-half feet, the juxtapositions created within the exhibition illustrate the artist’s proficiency with scale, as his signature style carries seamlessly across works of various mediums and dimensions.

Why We Like It: Elespe’s work has a propensity for conjuring an otherworldly atmosphere, one where the dappling of light and shadow are at once familiar yet mysterious. In his more diminutive compositions, such as (2023) or (2023), the shadows act as a framing as well as narrative device, lending compositional focus and alluding to elements that we cannot see, just beyond the darkness. Evoking ideas of nostalgia, memory, and even elements of magical realism, the somber color palettes and empathetic vignettes offer pictorial moments of respite and reflection. The larger scale paintings within the show continue the exploration of the psychological. Delving into the realm of abstraction, works like (2023) are highly intuitive and imply a self-contained logic that offers a meditative viewing experience.

See featured works from the exhibition below.

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