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In Spanish artist Josep Cisquella’s impeccably observed paintings, intricate layers of meaning lie just beneath calm, meditative surfaces. Though devoid of human figures, the works are by no means free of human presence: from the shadows of motorbikes and weathervanes to aging advertising signage, man’s interventions are everywhere in evidence. And then there is the quiet presence of the artist himself, whose hand exerts exquisite control over every image. In Cisquella’s works, time often takes center stage: capturing its long-term effects (rusting metal, flaking paint, cracking plaster) as well as fleeting shadows, his paintings subtly call attention to our own place in the universe’s temporal fabric.

In his newest body of work, Cisquella introduces a series of images involving fireplaces—a slyly humorous, decidedly postmodern twist on his renowned paintings of walls. The area above the mantel, of course, is traditionally a place to display artwork; by making art out of the very space art is meant to adorn, Cisquella turns this convention on its head. The fireplace images are a natural extension of his desire to elevate mundane phenomena to the place of art: in Mondrian Above Fireplace, the idea becomes more layered still, as the iconic abstract artwork is transformed into a household object and, ironically, back into art via Cisquella’s signature brand of realism.
 
In the fireplaces we also find a nested series of frames—the brick framed by the mantel, the mantel framed by the wall. The series continues in real life, with the actual frame surrounding the canvas and the actual wall on which the picture hangs. Just as they exist in the space between the man-made and the natural, the ephemeral and the eternal, Cisquella’s paintings operate in the gap between the imagined and the real—a shifting, complex, and endlessly fascinating territory.