Jerónimo Elespe: Lost Grey Machines | Ivorypress, Madrid
Lost Grey Machines was Jerónimo Elespe's first exhibition at Ivorypress. Bringing together paintings and works on paper, the exhibition explored domestic life and its impact on the creative process, often taking autobiographical experience as its point of departure.
Elespe conceives his drawings and paintings as abstract diaries in which everyday life and artistic practice become inseparable. As the artist has noted, the rhythms and repetitions of domestic life provide the conditions for a sustained creative process. Consequently, each work develops through a slow, cumulative method that may extend over months or even years, allowing for the gradual exploration of different painterly languages.
His practice is characterised by a continuous process of investigation and draws upon a wide range of visual references, from the visionary landscapes of Charles E. Burchfield and the woodblock prints of Utagawa Kuniyoshi to the comics of Henritte Valium. Through this constellation of influences, Elespe establishes a dialogue with both contemporary painting and its historical traditions, positioning his work between critical reflection and formal experimentation.
The exhibition featured a selection of the artist's distinctive small-format paintings on aluminium panels, works that curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has described as possessing "a remarkable sense of condensation." These were presented alongside works on paper and a series of glass display cases containing groups of drawings conceived as unified compositions. Together, these works underscored the intimate, process-based nature of Elespe's practice.
