Artist Javier Carro Temboury
Temboury
We met Javier Carro Temboury at JUSTMAD Contemporary Art Show in Madrid, shortly before Corona changed our lives. He is an artist and sculptor whose practice moves between ceramics, printmaking, and sculpture. He studied in Madrid, completed his training at the Beaux-Arts academy in Paris, and has since moved to Hamburg to benefit from the studios of HfbK university. He also co-runs Aspa Contemporary, a gallery in Madrid, together with his father and brother.
A bit about yourself.
After completing school in Madrid, I decided to start a path on my own and went to art university in Paris. This city and its Beaux-Arts academy have been very special platforms for exploring in my practice. In parallel, I am also closely involved in an art gallery in Madrid called Aspa Contemporary, which we've been running together with my father and brother for three years. This year I moved to Hamburg, benefiting from the studios of HfbK university, a great opportunity to pitch up with what Germany offers.
Greatest inspirations and influences?
My first and longest contact with culture, without a doubt, is growing up with an artist-architect father. I'm a big consumer of literature, probably the work of Roberto Bolano or Luis Martin-Santos have touched me the most. There are plenty of other path-changing artists: Picabia, Guston, Robert Morris, the list goes on.
Naturally, I am an updated follower of the current art scene, but I would rather visit first the archaeological sites or a modernist church when arriving in a new city. White cubes can get very tiring and nonsense. I'm constantly reading random things, because when we try to understand art's role in society, we quickly switch to many other fields: history, technical knowledge, superstitions, politics. They're everywhere. Paradoxically we can draw a lot of conclusions about the role of art while sitting in an airport cafeteria, surrounded by all its dull graphic signs.
Tell us about your creative process. How does it begin?
Ideas often come after exciting encounters. That's why strolling is crucial for me, see Baudelaire's Flaneur. I would first start by walking around, without expectations but with senses wide open, through a city, library, or any daily life experience. If something stimulates my attention, I will scribble a note or take a picture.
Then a big part takes place in the studio, where I assemble them into more concrete proposals. The ideas enter into a dialogue with their context. Choosing the physical material contributes a lot to this dialectic process, confronting new accidents and state changes. This is the reason I am so appealed to craft or elaborate techniques, like printmaking or ceramics. The process of making becomes suddenly a way of thinking by itself, specific to each medium.
After this, I would hang the pieces on the wall and let them cool for some weeks, thinking about what to include or change. I usually keep different projects in parallel, so if I get stuck with one I can switch my mindset to something else and then come back with fresher eyes.
"Paradoxically we can draw a lot of conclusions about the role of art while sitting in an airport cafeteria, surrounded by all its dull graphic signs."
Javier Carro TembouryWhat are the themes and topics of your work?
I constantly work mixing codes from here and there. Appropriation is a very interesting tool, which implies playing with pre-existing material. Something like cooking with what's already in the fridge. Every material has a problematic of its own, so very effective things can come out of a proper mix.
The title of my last solo show was Abreuvoir, a French word for the place where all different animals drink water on a farm. I thought about it as a real commonplace where all species would meet each other around a common activity. The idea of exhibition space as such was a strategy for bringing together works of distinct genre, and a real invitation for viewers to join the drinking place and refresh. And if we keep playing with the metaphor: what would be the exhibition's equivalent to the Abreuvoir's drinking water?
For my latest ceramic sculptures, I've been studying systems of conducts, from cables or pipes to our own blood and digestive system. Then I initiated these wall reliefs modelling structure-like shapes with two coloured clays. They passed from drawings to three-dimensional objects very intuitively. The final pieces look rough and still, like some sort of nonsense technologies made from archaic materials.
"I enjoy leaving an open end to the pieces, so anyone can project their thoughts on it. Speaking about series or how it's made is interesting, but ultimately the game is about the very particular piece in front of you, where 'what you see is what you see', quoting the master F. Stella. So that's why at some point I just stop disturbing with explanations, and let the piece stand by itself. And of course, there's pleasure, trivial as it sounds, as the biggest common denominator in my art making."
Favourite websites and social media?
I check often Bomb Magazine for nice interviews. UbuWeb is a great database and allows deep attention to contents.
Anything else you would like to share?
In these strange times and always, never give a break to sensibility. Pull something new out of everyday.
Never give a break to sensibility.
Pull something new out of everyday.
We met Javier at JUSTMAD, shortly before everything changed. Some encounters stay with you. Read more artists working in clay at ninunina.com/ceramic-art.
