Everything and Part, Todo y parte — Ana Juan
Opening Thursday, November 7, 2019 8:00 p.m.
Exhibition from November 7 to December 4
The title of this exhibition is an analogy: individuality as part of an unattainable whole.
“Todo y parte”, “Everything and Part” is a visual fable that tells of humour and death, cruelty and love, and reminds us of the fragility of this adventure that is life.
This analogy is also present in the design of the exhibition, materializing in a 2 x 2m drawing. Which is in turn composed of 47 drawings, independent of each other, but at the same time needed by each other to interrelate, creating a total image, and telling us a story within other stories.
Tales that tell us other tales about the chain of life that ends with death to start again.
Drawings made with graphite on bamboo paper, mounted on a frame, accompanied by small sculptures and reliefs made of resin.
The line as a common thread of these stories, and, once again, a journey from simplicity to complexity.
This exhibition is a claim and declaration of my love for the drawing as a discipline in itself.
I am a drawer, and drawing is my language: when I paint, when I sculpt, and even when I write, I always draw. Drawing is my universal language with which I relate to the world, the house I live in and the drifting boat that has saved me countless times from shipwrecking.
Ana Juan
Photos ©Jose Ramón Cuesta 2019
Ana Juan
Ana Juan was born in Valencia, Spain, where she studied Fine Arts. She began her professional career in Madrid where she became known for publications in magazines such as Madrizand La Luna and for collaborations with the newspapers El País and El Mundo. Soon after, she commenced working internationally, creating posters and advertising campaigns for clients like Renfe or American Airlines and others, and illustrating book and magazine book covers. Professional highlights here are her works for The New Yorker magazine, for which she has contributed 25 covers, including the commemorations for the attacks of 9/11 in 2001 and the attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015.
She is the author of children’s books such as Frida and The Night Eater, which received the Ezra Jacks Keats Award (USA) in 2004, and illustrated books for adults such as Snowhite, Demeter or Stephen King’s The Man in the Black Suit.
Her work also includes a collaboration with Amnesty International on projects such as Eleanor’s Dream (celebrating the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Human Rights)or I Welcome (on the tragedy of refugees). In 2011, she was awarded the National Prize of illustration by the Ministry of Culture of Spain, and in 2012 she received the Medal of San Carlos, granted by the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
She has held numerous exhibitions in Spain as well as abroad, in New York, Mexico or Tokyo. In 2006, the Casal Solleric de Palma de Mallorca dedicated an anthology, the exhibition entitled Cor i Foscor, Ana Juan, 1985-2005.
One of her most recent exhibitions has been Ana Juan. Drawing the other side, an interactive exhibition where various technologies such as virtual reality and video games are integrated,giving her work a link to a new dimension.
Ana Juan lives and works in Madrid, where she continues to illustrate, to paint and to tell stories through her drawings.
“I have developed professionally mainly in my work as an illustrator which has allowed me to walk freely on a fine interdisciplinary line, and in this fine line I have found my place.”
Ana Juan
