Xavier Toubes

"Xavier Toubes´s relationship with art is very clear and straightforward.However, it is so difficult to explain in an age in which the creativeprocess can not justify itself and artists are forced to find excuses andobjectives in contemporary social and political networks; whoeversearches for them must do so with the tenacious wisdom expressed inToubes´s ceramic heads.
Toubes has placed himself ?as a worker who knows of the hidden joy intransforming matter into spirit? in a world in which space and time arenot totally of the present but also of the past and of the future, of thedead and of the unborn. Perhaps this is why he never falls into theveneration of what has already been ?a path into ineptitude and inertia?not does he permit himself that superstition of the future which is nomore than the vanity of the present. Toubes is as opposed to theidolatrous traditionalism of the past as he is to the brutal and abstractprogressivism of those who, in wishing to open the doors of the future,are merely compounding the mistakes and short-sightedness of theirfictitious present. Toubes´s friendship with the dead of all ages and his loyalty to them is perhaps the best clue to his instinctive success inworking with clay like a poet, with freedom and universal reason."
from Teresa Barro. Matter and Spirit. Extracted from the catalogueInternational Ceramic Art, 1996

I don't think I could have described this artist's work any better then the person that originally wrote this. I happened across this ceramist while researching artists for a ceramics course that I am currently taking over at North Central College in Naperville. My reasons for using this man's work in both the ceramics course and this blog for the contemporay art history course is to show a few peices that I personally don't very much enjoy. I couldn't see the point in only finding art peices that I thought enjoyable to write of. The first Toubes information I came across was the photographs of his peices that are accesable through the first link, they are in my opinion hard on the eyes, and on a squeamishness in me that I don't normally have. The peices are abstracted forms which interested me after I got over the inital shock that they caused, but appear to be dribbling blood and dying or dead. The quote was pulled from the second link, this is where I was able to read a short about Toubes work which brought some understanding to the appearance of the peices and even some appreciation. I still could not bring myself to necessarily "like" or "enjoy" Toubes peices but I could appreciate them for the idea he made them with. "...Toubes´s friendship with the dead of all ages and hisloyalty to them is perhaps the best clue to his instinctive success inworking with clay like a poet, with freedom and universal reason." This particular section of the above quote is what brought me to see Toubes work for what I take is as, a tribute of sorts to death and the dead. He doesn't show this tribute in a way that I think we normally would choose to. Usually the dead are shown as pictures of their former selves, beautified even to show the gratefulness and love that they were given alive. While Toubes has choosen to show the dead in a sort of real time light, as dead decaying bodies, to show their life's blood pouring from them and about them. In all as I said above I don't particularly enjoy Xavier Toiubes' peices but I can appreciate them and while I also don't exactly like them they are good in my opinion. I really do wonder what others would think of Toubes ceramics, and wonder if his being from Spain inspired his chose to depict the dead in such a way through a cultural aspect that I am unaware of.