Oriol Espinal

Oriol Espinal - Drachenspur

Technique: Mixed media on Japanese paper

Artist Biography:

 

From the most primitive cultures to the present day, the figure of the dragon -Drache in German- has been a universal symbol that has survived in the East and in the West, embodying the myth of the monster and the representation of the devil, but also the image of the animal or of that which is animal in ourselves. With the name of Drache Oriol Espinal has given the title to the group of his latest works -sculptures or dragon-like objects- that have emerged from the voice of silence, from the war cry that the artist has uttered during the solitary combat waged in the shelter of his inner self. And we can say that Oriol Espinal has passed the test, like Siegfried, Perseus, Apollo and the solar gods who defeat the dragon to become heroes. Like the hero, the artist has a permanent battle with art. For this reason, all of Oriol Espinal's works inspired by this symbolic combat against the dragon are objects related to this conflict: steles, shields, trophies, ritual objects, etc. In other words, the artist as a gladiator wrapped in the tools of art, alone before the beast, alone before himself. As a metaphor for this combat, the artist has taken the dragon's skin, its rough scaly surface as a symbol and invokes the dragon and the mythical heroes who have defeated it. Thus, with this patient, daily struggle, he sets himself up as a poet of the ritual time for the preparations for combat by riveting one by one the leaden scales of the monster that lives within us. Drachenberg is the stage for a combat, the monument dedicated to the dragon Fafner, whose heart was swallowed by the hero Sigurdh, who will thus enable the soul and wisdom of the vanquished to revive in that of the victor. This kind of monument keeps in an elevated urn the sleeping dragon-serpent just before the combat. Related to Fafner, we also have the Drachenwunde, which is the door to die and the door to be reborn, a metaphor for the struggle of the new man against the old man, the same struggle that the artist has just carried out with his own past, which he defeats even at the cost of a certain degree of self-immolation. This process of regeneration is explained very well by Franco Cardini when he says that the hero certainly knows that confronting his dragon means fighting with himself, committing suicide as an old man in order to rise again as a new man. Another series of works in this exhibition, more objectual, are those entitled Hero's Trophy, which take the dragon's skin as a fundamental element of their composition. Of particular note are the Disc for a ceremonial, where the qualities of the hero are invoked (audacity, mystery, skill, pain, criticism, humor, wit, wisdom, madness, solitude, patience), the Object for a ritual, the Stele for the augur or the Shield-Bed. It is in this way that Oriol Espinal invokes the opposing spirits in a war without truce and without possible pacts: life and death, old and new, god and devil, angel and demon, light and darkness, art and non-art. The idea of regeneration, of self-resurgence, but not from the ashes, but from the act of devouring alive the heart of the dragon that nests in our entrails.