Manuel Aja Espil

Manuel Aja Espil
Born 1987 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Lives and works in Madrid, Spain
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Manuel Aja Espil: Worlds of Exile
3 August - 14 October 2023
Manuel Aja Espil in his Buenos Aires studio, 2022

Manuel Aja Espil's (b. 1987, Buenos Aires, Argentina) introspective practice leads him to research the history and materiality of painting. His work depicts imaginary universes that are a fusion of historic European and Argentine pictorial traditions and contemporary iconography. He blends landscape, memory, and fiction, creating strangely familiar, while simultaneously disorienting, compositions.
Aja Espil's Practice

Manuel Aja Espil’s imagination draws on both art history and popular culture. His fascination with science fiction and the dystopian gaze of nature and society leads to his thought-provoking compositions.

Aja Espil's painting was born of his need to create stories. Originally an aspiring filmmaker, he abandoned his initial plan and enrolled in the Artists' Program at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Argentina in 2016. He incorporates tradition, metaphor, and everyday surroundings in his practice, manifesting real and imagined memories.

Aja Espil's most recent paintings include seemingly malformed caricatures, lacking identifying features, such as gender, race, or personality, who are derived from characters of his childhood cartoons, comics, and movies. These playful representations intertwine reality and fantasy.

His works provoke the thought of new possibilities, intertextualities, and narratives. From the Pampa to an ice world in ruins, Aja Espil's compositions inspire us to think of his paintings as a reflection of our obscure world.
Manuel Aja Espil, "Invasion of Wilkes Land," 2023, Oil on linen, 56 3/4 x 72 1/2 in (144 x 184 cm)
Download Aja Espil's Artist Statement
Worlds of Exile at HM&C

Worlds of Exile was conceived in three groups of works and three genres: portrait and genre painting, landscape, and historical painting. Aja Espil looks to science fiction, art history, and the history of Argentina, as his main sources of inspiration. In doing so, he produces a narrative that recalls his memories of migrating to Spain. He worked on the series during that transitional time, a moment when he questioned his surroundings and place of belonging.
Manuel Aja Espil, Contemplation, 2023, Oil on linen, 45 5/8 x 33 7/8 in (116 x 86 cm)

"The characters are figures of my imagination, and the product of a deep interaction with the painting. They are each in dialogue with a background that refers to different geographies, different times, and each has an element of science fiction. They are each suspended in an action on a sort of stage, and in the foreground, there are objects that construct the narrative of each work. Each of these characters represents moments: creativity, reflection, and rest."

-Manuel Aja Espil
Characters
Manuel Aja Espil, World of Exile, 2023, Oil on linen, 56 1/4 x 41 in (143 x 104 cm)

"The landscapes, on the other hand, consist of an exercise of imagination: imagining nature without the direct presence of human beings, but indirectly. Technology, objects, skulls, perspectives, spacecrafts, make up the story of what is the trace of the human, and the landscape as a reflective situation of our existence."

-Manuel Aja Espil
Landscapes
History Painting

Manuel Aja Espil, "Invasion of Wilkes Land," 2023, Oil on linen, 56 3/4 x 72 1/2 in (144 x 184 cm)

In Aja Espil's history-inspired painting, he uses storytelling and metaphor as a poetic exercise for symbolic transformation. Inspired by science fiction, the artist considers painting as a means to transmit the knowledge of today's world to future generations.
Earlier Works
Post-Pandemia (Exiles), 2022

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Manuel Aja Espil, Las Guerras del Agua, Post-Pandemia, 2022
Manuel Aja Espil, "Azymetrikah & The New World Order," 2019-2022, Oil on canvas, 75 1/4 x 65 3/8 in (191 x 166 cm)
¡Pandemia! Series, 2020-2022

In ¡Pandemia!, Aja Espil transforms a pictorial world into his immediate environment, while being curious about the identity of the territory of Argentine society in contrast to a background haunted by the mortality and fragility that the pandemic revealed.

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Manuel Aja Espil, Pandemic! (Batman's a Scientist!), ¡Pandemia! (Batman es un Científico!), 2021
Manuel Aja Espil in his Brooklyn studio at ISCP, 2022
Installation View of Joseph Andreas at Quadro Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires

Joseph Andreas Series, 2018

Inspired by Rembrandt Van Rijn, Aja Espil created the series Joseph Andreas, which addresses opposing belief systems: science and mysticism with sarcasm. The series approaches the tradition of genres in a new way, a trend that can be traced throughout Aja Espil's work.
Installation Views of "Joseph Andreas" at Quadro Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires
Installation View of Anton Regularis at Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires

Anton Regularis (Biographical Series), 2017

Inspired by the European pictorial tradition, Anton Regularis emerges as a cross between science fiction, romantic landscape, and art historical references. In this Western style painting, tradition serves as a resource to create his own narrative. The fiction that Aja Espil builds is that of a figure called "Anton Regularis," a reader of art history who finds memories of his own childhood and travels in each image that he sees.

Anton Regularis becomes a biographical series through the works' titles because Aja Espil narrates the life of the ghostly character, who is wearing an empty astronaut suit. Each painting represents a stage in the life of Anton Regularis. Anton Regularis, The Saxon highlights one of Aja Espil's first excursions into historical references, and The Travels of Anton Regularis inaugurates the representation of his passion for painting landscapes.
- Manuel Aja Espil, Journeys (of Anton Regularis), Los Viajes (de Anton Regularis), 2017
- Manuel Aja Espil, Last Days (of Anton Regularis), Últimos Días (de Anton Regularis) 2017
Installation Views of "Anton Regularis" at Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires
- Manuel Aja Espil in his Barcelona studio, 2023
- Aja Espil in his Brooklyn studio at ISCP, 2022
Installation Views of "La Cosa Soy Yo" (Thesis Exhibition) at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, 2016
In the Studio

Aja Espil's studio practice involves working on a constellations of paintings, which cover roughly the entirety of the walls. The group of works or series become chapters of a bigger story. The studio is a panoramic view of the world that Aja Espil wants to present.
Manuel Aja Espil in "Arte en Juego," Fundación PROA
Manuel Aja Espil in "Terapia," MALBA
Books That Inspire Manuel Aja Espil's Practice

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Publications
- Publications
  Arte en Juego
  Una Aproximación Lúdica al Arte Argentino, Fundación PROA, 2021
  Manuel Aja Espil participated in a group exhibition that presented a playful approach to Argentine art at PROA Fundación.
- Publications
  Terapia
  MALBA, 2021
  Manuel Aja Espil participated in a group exhibition at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA).

Manuel Aja Espil

Manuel Aja Espil

DOWNLOAD CV

DOWNLOAD EXHIBITION CATALOGUE of Worlds of Exile

DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE OF WORLDS OF EXILE

DOWNLOAD "MANUEL AJA ESPIL: ELEVEN PATHS TO PLANETARY EXILES" BY GABRIELA RANGEL

Manuel Aja Espil: Worlds of Exile

Aja Espil's Practice

Download Aja Espil's Artist Statement

Worlds of Exile at HM&C

Earlier Works

In the Studio

Manuel Aja Espil in "Arte en Juego," Fundación PROA

Manuel Aja Espil in "Terapia," MALBA

Books That Inspire Manuel Aja Espil's Practice

Publications

Arte en Juego

Terapia

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