Manuel Aja Espil: Ozymandias is on view at Hutchinson Modern & Contemporary until January 31st, 2026
Ozymandias is the second exhibition of Aja Espil’s work at HM&C. On view will be nine new paintings that draw thematically from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s eponymous 19th-Century poem. Like Shelley’s Ozymandias, Aja Espil’s paintings assert the sublime power of nature, and posit it as a force superior in strength to human civilization. The artist’s new works comprise eerie, evocative landscapes embedded with fragments from the present industrial age—many having succumbed to the corrosive forces of time and nature. Together, these images seem to act as missives from the future; they encourage us to examine the ultimate consequence of humanity’s current trajectory, while underscoring art’s uniquely potent capacity to examine, to memorialize, and to mediate between unequal forces.
