Curatorial text by Fernando Castro Flórez (Plasencia, province of Cáceres, 1964), Spanish professor, philosopher, aesthete, and art critic.
Unofficial English translation

It would be very difficult to define the current task of painting, assuming one were assigned. Pontormo already noted, in his letter to Benedetto Carchi, that “painting is nothing more than a piece of cotton woven by hell, which lasts little and is of low price: remove the thin film [quello ricciolino] that covers it, and no one takes it into account anymore.” Nevertheless, no matter how much it is questioned, painting remains one of the most intense “dreams” of art1; on that “surface” all kinds of obsessions have been fixed, and that visual luxury, by a kind of retro-projection, shapes or governs a destiny, singular or collective. “All existence – the fact of existing, or that there is existence – is the memory of that of which, by definition, there is no memory: birth”2.

The artist cannot reveal the truth about art without hiding it, turning that revelation into an artistic manifestation. From the Verneinung, in a deliberate process of de-banality (what the Russian formalists called “ostranenia”), emerges the power of illusio. In a brief passage of the Poetics, devoted to the forms of artistic diction, Aristotle defines the enigma as follows: “The form of the enigma consists, then, in connecting impossible terms while saying existing things.” The enigmatic nature of Elena Gual’s figurative conception of painting lies in its accentuation of carnality. She manages to make something traditional and even evident acquire a tone or, better, a mysterious materiality.

To contemplate a painting by Elena Gual is to experience its intense physical presence. It is evident that she has assimilated a classical training3, and also that, at a moment (fortunately) of surpassing orthodox stylistic conceptions, she is capable of developing her passion for representation while simultaneously maintaining a peculiar abstract “tone.” She does not attempt, in any case, to create a hyper-realistic image, although her goal is to sediment the truth of the women she portrays. This creator has stated that, ultimately, her works emerge from a desire for equality, that is, from a rightful yearning to end the marginalization of women while at the same time keeping on her dynamic plastic surface the emotions, traces, and echoes of encounters4.

It was at Arena Martínez gallery5 that I first had the opportunity to see Elena Gual’s works, and from the very first moment I was fascinated by those faces and bodies painted with a palette knife, with the sensation that the oil was still fresh, as if life were beating there. It was not, by any means, a “Pygmalion effect” that occurred when I approached the paintings of this passionate painter; rather, I had the (intensely aesthetic) sensation that painting was splendidly revitalized.

Our mind can be understood as a wunderblock6, that place where the trace of everything that was ever drawn remains. “What is art,” asks Marina Tsvietáieva, “but the encounter with lost things, the perpetuation of losses?”7. That sincere effort toward the impossible8 arises, again and again, in the works of Elena Gual, who does not surrender to the vertigo of “novelties”9, but in her paintings sediments her pursuit of the bodily beauty of painting.

Elena Gual has stated, with as much lucidity as simplicity, that the women she paints have been part of her life10. Georges Didi-Huberman has reminded us that the “other life” is never given to us in advance. For it to take shape, it is necessary that we awaken to the dreams themselves11. This vibrant painting offers us faces and bodies without imposing narratives or anecdotes, composing the essential, modulating gestures of astonishing liveliness: daydreams or driftings are rooted in the everyday, in the experience of the skin which, as Valéry said, can be the deepest.

This young creator has literally incorporated Renaissance techniques to compose those bodies and faces of women of all ethnicities and ages. In the exhibition at Casa de Vacas in Madrid’s Retiro Park, she draws on her Andalusian roots, even self-portraying “as a flamenca.” In this series, flowers and the intense color red acquire special prominence. Sensuality and festivity are embodied with a mixture of sobriety and passion. It gives the impression that Elena Gual invites us to share a “sobremesa” with her splendid women, who have their eyelids closed in a state of introspection or daydreaming. We observe the painting rooted: a woman turns her head toward us (in the work titled Raíces, 2024), holding an immense flower on her shoulder, an epiphany of beauty. There lies, exposed, the vibrant life of pictorial matter, the beautiful blossoming of imagination, the portrait of a longed-for equality that allows the difference of desire.