Light upon Light

10 January – 16 February 2019
Light upon Light
Galeria Marlborough, Madrid
Curated by Enrique Juncosa

Pure Love Making
2018
Oil on Canvas
120 x 230 cm

Amar and Sara’s Nights
2016
Oil on Canvas
150 x 150 cm

Rustem’s Simurgh
2011
Oil on Canvas
130 x 130 cm

Shahmaran’s Elixir
2010
Oil on Canvas
100 x 100 cm

Quilted Narratives 01
2018
Patchwork
60 x 60 cm

Quilted Narratives 21
2018
Patchwork
60 x 60 cm

Fish Memory Series 08
2018
Ceramic
25 x 25 x 25 cm

Icarus’s Challenge with the Sun
2014
Mixed Media
130 x 130 x 25 cm

Simurgh’s Seven Cavalry
2015
Mixed Media
130 x 300 x 25 cm

Secrets in the Urn 26
Dhul Qarnayn Series
2018
Ceramic
30 x 80 x 35 cm

Zeus’s Love Trap
2015
Oil on Canvas
150 x 200 cm

Leda’s Dream
2014
Oil on Canvas
100 x100 cm

God is the Light of the heavens, and the earth; a lamp, the lamp is in a glass, (and) the glass is as it were a brightly shining star, lit from a blessed olive tree, neither eastern nor western, the oil whereof almost gives light though fire touch it not – light upon light… (Surat ul Nur 24:35).

Light upon Light features the works of the artist thought of as hybrids of painting and sculpture, in the form of large reliefs which incorporate plastic and metal elements and new groups of ceramics that take the form of fish, urns, human skulls and horns, and reminiscent of the story of Dhul-Qarnayn and other myths. Also exhibited are the patchworks and his paintings all in the genre of op art.

A large part of the artist oeuvre, including works in the exhibition, is characterised by the rhythmic repetition of lines forming graded colours and geometrical structures. His works contain many references from literary, mythical and sacred traditions. They often suggest paradoxes or opposing ideas, such as combining new concepts and ancient craft techniques, speaking of the present in the archaic symbols and offering spiritual views through material arrangements. All this suggests volume and depth in a space also imbued with a mysterious, symbolic light.

For Juncosa, visually, his work is rich in formal, chromatic events and shows clear evidence of the tradition of Islamic art, in which abstraction and ornamentation become metaphors pointing the way in a higher reality. In some of these works, he incorporates metallic and plastic spherical volumes, and the image of a black sun relates to the Sufi concept of black light that refers to the direct experience of divinity. Although he sometimes deals with tragic subject matters, his works are optimistic that the light and its metaphorical potential dominate them. In the esoteric Islamic tradition of Sufism, the light becomes identified with being itself, and the universe is a web of angelic orders arranged according to their distance from this light, in a progressively downward succession. Juncosa suggests that the oeuvre of the artist gives form to this metaphysical vision of light.