Jose Luis Puche
'The Legacy of Water'

The show entitled “The Legacy of Water” comprises 16 recent works expressly created for this exhibition in the Olsen Gallery of Sydney and curated by Kate Smith. There is no common thread – either narrative or conceptual - in these pieces, where pleasure reigns supreme. Immersed in a time of pandemic that is still far from being over, the first emotional setback suffered and experienced by my generation has led me to reflect on the importance or otherwise of what surrounds us in life, on what is important and what is superfluous, on the very existence of life. In my work, water is the driver that transforms everything, the driver of my drawings, created by water splashing and pounding the paper, occasionally with some violence, as nothing new can exist without the material and visual onslaught of what had formerly been there. Water nourishes us, connects continents and begets life, even beyond the confines of our planet, in the universe, where water might be a sign of life. Thus, water applied to drawing can be understood as the last communicative language, from constructive and procedural sketching to its transformation into artistic matter, according to how the water has fallen upon the charcoal and the paper, how it might organically drip down, tracing its own furrows, rivers and tributaries, dragging down all the matter along its course until whatever is not meant to be part of the work has dripped onto the ground. What is left behind, by way of evidence, of the action, the drive and the force is the legacy that water leaves on the work, what infuses life and existence to it. These works are reflections on victory, light, magic, unsettling landscapes and objects that quietly connect with the observer, an array of situations that rather than belong to the realm of images, actually pertain to the eye of the beholder, who arranges and interprets them – based on his or her past experience – in order to grant the observer’s very own and even intimate sense to every one of the works. José Luis Puche