Artists

Javier Calleja

Press release

Opening on Saturday, May 30, 2026 from 6 to 8 pm Almine Rech Paris, Turenne is pleased to announce 'CURIOUSLY', Javier Calleja's sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from May 30 to July 25, 2026. "I'm not a revolutionary artist, I'm an evolutionary artist," Javier Calleja says, without hesitation. He's right: if contemporary art was born and came of age amid the cradle of a revolutionary aesthetic — always defining itself against the dominant aesthetic — it is possible that in the twenty-first century things have shifted somewhat, or that they, too, have simply evolved. His work does not carry the charge of aesthetic, stylistic, or structural revolution. What it offers instead is the excitement of perpetual evolution within the framework he has defined and the system he has built. That system summons a cast of characters whose ancestors live in comics — he mentions Francisco Ibáñez Talavera (1936–2023) in particular — and in the history of painting, Yoshitomo Nara among others: small figures, often shown face-on, looking straight at the viewer. There is no backdrop, no setting to provide contextual information. It's Calleja, his figures, and us. "I can talk about technique, why the big eyes, why this, why that; but you need to have your own idea or emotion about the painting." Of the work of Ibáñez Talavera Calleja says he was struck above all by the character of Rompetechos, "a man who doesn't understand everything, only made of circles, round face, round eyes, round nose." He drew him thousands of times. Later, his own characters seemed equally fated to a kind of geometric perfection. The figures who populate the works in his Paris exhibition have, however, taken full advantage of the freedom he has granted them. In this body of new work, perfect circles no longer govern the making of these characters — spare as they are, yet so expressive: eyes become oval, sometimes slanted; mouths assert themselves; expressions multiply. These characters carry messages — short phrases — which the work offers up as slogans. "Take my Hand," "Me First": they speak directly to the viewer and establish an intimacy. Calleja has said he wants his work to be felt, not interpreted. — Éric Troncy, critic, curator, and co-director of Consortium Museum in Dijon, France