Juan Francisco Casas Exhibition

Solo Exhibition

The Fernando Pradilla gallery presents the seventh solo exhibition by Juan Francisco Casas (Jaén, 1976) entitled Non piangere. It is an exhibition inspired by the figure of the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, in which the iconic works of the artist serve as a pretext for Casas to develop his characteristic iconography around the female body and its nature. The body as a place of political and social reflection that the spectator is confronted with from his or her own idiosyncrasy: how do we see ourselves, how do we see the other, what idea do we have of ourselves as individual and social bodies? Casas refers very aptly to Clarice Lispector in her work The Greatest Experience, in which the Brazilian author writes: "Before, I wanted to be the others in order to know what was not me. Then I understood that I had already been the others and that it was easy. My greatest experience would be to be the other of the others: the other of the others is me". Casas's work of a markedly hyperrealist character based on instant photography is a biographical description of the events of his day-to-day life. The artist portrays a playful world marked by endless parties, surrounded by his friends and girlfriends, where one can perceive an exaltation of hedonism and living in the moment that has marked an entire generation of young millennials whose lives are overexposed on social networks.

Juan Francisco Casas has received numerous grants and awards, including the Colegio de España en París. Ministry of Culture and the Grant of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the ABC Drawing Prize. His work is represented in the collections of ARTIUM, Basque Museum of Contemporary Art, Vitoria, Spain; ABC Collection, Madrid; Collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Collection of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome as well as in numerous private collections in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, USA, Mexico, Colombia and Spain.