To Paint a Universe: enter the laboratory of Xavier Busquets
Cherie Louise
courtesy of the artist
With dramatic, almost violent, strokes and textured layers, Xavier Busquets tries to capture the passion and pain of life, love and modern society. "I paint feelings," he explains, "feelings of friendship, feelings of beautiful sunny days, rain in New York . . . I try to put in an image something that escapes words. Sometimes I do not know what I am painting. I paint my nonsense." Busquets works quickly to actualize his imagined compositions; he says, "usually in one or two days I have something close to what I want." However, the final details, the particulars that capture that inexpressible "emotion" may keep him occupied for weeks.
It was during his first four years in New York that he developed his passion for Abstract Expressionism. He believes he is creating whole new universes, which can be destroyed and re-created at a brush stroke, and these dominate his paintings. Xavier paints a busy canvas, strikingly full with possible interpretations–the viewer is left wondering what is actually going on? Perhaps the case more with abstract art, one’s automatic response is to just feel the image and let it be an expression, as opposed to an expression that can be understood or interpreted.
Although Busquets paints with a colorful palette, the feeling emanating from his work is not light-hearted and fanciful. Instead, the color only highlights the dark presence on the canvas all-the-more. Prominently placed in the center of most of his pieces, there is a core of confusion and strife scratched out of grey and black areas. Wild stokes swipe across the surface of his paintings, as though indicating corrections that cannot be made or mistakes that cannot be erased. The blanket colors which slide across the frame contrast starkly to the definite stokes layered on top and the more vibrant colors contrast with the dark and shady core of the canvasses. In an odd way, although non sensical, these multifaceted elements to his art suggest a language of the artist’s own. Something is trying to be communicated, there is effort and detail enough on the canvas to suggest a true feeling of sincere communication–but the viewer cannot appreciate it fully without speaking the same language. One has to ask: can the artist himself understand what he has ‘written’? Or is the ‘language’ that we see one flexible enough to communicate with anyone? It is the nature of Abstract art, it seems, to prompt these questions and yet to seldom provide accompanying answers.
The gallimaufry of contorted images with mixed linear shapes, scratched out of the canvas to reveal a random third dimension to it’s form, is very reminiscent of Jackson Pollack. This serves to cement the presumption that pseudo-violent angst dominates the subject of many of Xavier’s efforts. One cannot help but feel a strange sense of reality wash over them upon viewing these pieces. Artists often help to depict the mixture of contradictions and confusion experienced in life; at first glance Xavier’s work seems to indulge this sense of truth and reality, the most impacting aspect of his work. Even if there is little else definition one can find.
As primary inspiration, Busquets quickly cites Hans Hofmann and Franz Kline. Though not as structural as much of Hofmann’s work, there are certainly graphic similarities between the two artists’ styles. Echoes of Kline’s sweeping, energetic gestures are evident as well. Pressed further, Busquets also pays tribute to the influences of Asger Jorn and Pierre Alechinsky. The frenetic, energized marks of Jorn are certainly at play in Busquets’s work. He is also influenced by those closer to home, notably Marc Heine–whom Busquets refers to as his "mentor"–his studio-mate for the last three years.
He paints on large canvases and likes to explore mixed media. He incorporates everything from torn posters to sand. "I like to experiment with media," he says. "And I make my own color from pigments. My studio is a messy lab. I like to explore and mix the pigments directly on the canvas…I paint for myself just because I enjoy it," he says. But "I would like to have one of my paintings in The MoMA. Why not?" In the immediate future, Busquets’s works will be shown this June in Berlin at the Berlinerkunst Project, which is certain to be a wonderful follow-up to his successful show at New York City’s Broadway Gallery last December. Ever passionate and dedicated to his pursuit, it is anyone’s guess where we might see his work next.
