Javier Peñafiel — Premise and Past. Confedrama and Texts

Peñafiel presents a confedrama on the time of the meaningful encounter, on friendship and on assemblage as a collective bond. The starting point is a sphinx poised in balance on the fragile line that blurs at dusk and sinks into night, in summer, when birds cry out as they gather to sleep, while other animals become active and darkness makes transformation possible.

“The sphinx is the patron of friends, whether friendly or not. There is a de-appropriated zone where friendship... In the past, friendship endured the same trials: pandemics, plague, money... Now, within the all-encompassing algorithmic order, its past appears different, as does its instrumental use. Not everything is instrumental; friendship remains safe, not because it can be diagnosed through empathy, but because it occurs among joys, affinities and enigmas with no expiry date, even though it is very often abandoned. It is death, as a hyperhuman piece of news, that later reveals who the friends were. Friendship: poetry throughout its entire interspecies existence.”

Javier Peñafiel’s work is situated at the intersection of drawing, voice, video, writing and calligraphy, tools that he often stages in what he calls confedramas. Peñafiel has exhibited at biennials, museums, art fairs, galleries and alternative spaces across several continents, including major international events such as the 28th São Paulo Biennial, as well as projects in cities including New York, Berlin, London, Bordeaux, Lisbon, Porto, Lugano, Medellín, San Juan, Mexico City and Santiago de Chile.

He has published more than twenty monographs, alongside texts by art historians, critics and specialists which, over the course of several decades, make it possible to trace not only the development of his body of work but also the shifting contexts of contemporary visual arts.