Sebastián Espejo, 'Mesa del comedor (1) ' / 'Dining Room Table (1)'

Sebastián Espejo was born in 1990 in Viña del Mar, Chile. His work is rooted in the daily practice of painting to reflect on the visual experience and the representation of light. After graduating in Visual Arts from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, he has exhibited his work in several institutions and galleries in Chile and the UK, most notably in a group exhibition at the Palacio Vergara Museum in Viña del Mar, and in his solo exhibitions at the Piloto Pardo Gallery in London. Since 2023 he lives and works in London.

“Year 1996, the autumn light was warm and anticipated a mild winter. My morning routine was the same: go out into the garden and climb on a couple of trees with branches that grew horizontally. I remember the Myospores, a tangle of branches and leaves from the base forming a comfortable dome at the top. One of the tree arms allowed me to see the ravine on the other side of the hill. Now, it is late afternoon; the light is setting. I climb up and see ochre patches among the grasses and some accents of light thanks to the spring’s California poppy. I see houses building themselves. I see hillsides overlooking the sea. And I feel that no one is looking at me, concealed in this foliage.

Like climbing, my process of painting starts by wandering. It is a direct observation experience, looking for opportunities to lift the motif. I ponder the best moves, seeing and thinking how my body dances with the tree. Then, balancing the weights, moving slowly and sometimes quicker, I began my ascent. There are morphologies that I cannot see from the ground but can only acknowledge when I am on my way up. However, the result is not reaching the top of the tree. It is usually just a rush of energy, an idea that allows you to find a place and stay. And that is it: the painting is done.

As images, my paintings are silent. Minims. Realistic because of their direct connection with the sight. There is no great story, leading figure, or remarkable event that emerges. Primarily, they are just a point of view on how the light hits the forms. My paintings are fragments: farsight landscapes, an illuminated wall, or a scene that turns its back on the obelisk that defines that terroir. My painting captures geography but describes it from an angle that only partially accounts for it. Fragmentary compositions display the process and the undone. As a whole, it translates to painting something: a squalid reminiscent of a sight. I found beauty in the hypocaloric limitations of a medium that does not fulfil an ambition. In that sense, they are partial and limited. They give more room to the cracked wall in composition than the splendour. At the same time, it shows the painting, the material, processes, and gestures interweaved as a language. They are the sight from the top of a tree, with all the concerns of a tightrope walker. What may sound like the privileged viewpoint, the bird’s eye is no more than a partial view of a sum of fragments on the coastal edge of Viña del Mar. It is difficult for me to imagine a more distant vision from Haussmann’s Parisian centrifugal force; both located at the top, mine is the sum of overlapping obstacles that inscribe, in the distance, a marine frame. Viña del Mar is a mixture of small edges that pile up, making it difficult to see the whole, what is behind, and what was there before. Coloured pieces trembling by the wind. 

For me, painting is a place for awareness. It is a daily exercise of attention, my everyday morning routine, a place of rootedness before the successive dissolution of my visual experiences. In every sitting, a painting.”