Xavier Escribà’s (Paris, 1969) work inhabits that nebulous area between painting and sculpture, being neither, while both at the same time. Created by layering coats of paint, the artist slices them into strips, turns them inside out or arranges his materials to suggest biomorphic shapes, boxes or cushions, liberating the work from the constrictions of subject and framing to deliver us a conceptual body of work that defines the materialness of art.
Accumulation, a profound concern for the material, and the elimination of the frame result in a group of paintings that are unexpectedly sculptural. “I create objects without wanting to. So I have to accept that I make sculptures, even if 95% of my activity consists of painting.” He creates these hybrid works through a slow and persistent process that he loosely defines as the “witness of his experience.” Laying monochrome sheets of acrylic paint over one another, conceals the paint, leaving it barely perceptible while revealing its sides or reverse in volumetric forms that are the accumulation of this experience.
Xavier Escribà has exhibited widely over the past 25 years with exhibitions all over Europe and his work can be found in numerous public collections, including the Fonds Municipal d’Art Contemporain (Paris), the Musée d’Art Moderne de Ceret (France), the Museu d’Art Modern (Tarragona), amongst others.
