Baby Eyes. Julián Madero at Proyecto Mono Rojo

To express is to squeeze so that something comes out, Madero told me. In his painting, he prefers to rock in a baby's dialogue. The words behind his colors melt at the edges or splash around in cosmic eggs. Julián avoids the delicate, ceremonious approach to the stretched canvas: what he seeks is to lose control, to let go, to play with thin acid-soaked sheets that crinkle and receive marks without fear.

When Julián arrives at his studio, he wakes up his hand with pintujos and the rivers that rise from there. He lands daily on this cheap mirror where he releases humor, silences, gaps, blisters. Three years ago this routine began as an act of tenderness against the onset of depression. Then he was caught by the impulse to train his fingers on matter, the delight of improvisation, physical but also mental and psychological warm-ups—an opportunity to unravel masculinity, eroticism, lineage, the surplus of energy.

Sandra Sánchez, Carlos Morales, and the artist wrapped walls up to the ceiling with paintings with the soul of drawings. The curatorial process followed the same logic as the paint daubs in their choreographies of space. They completed one wall per day and, in those groupings, a baby dance was marked. There was so much color and so much decision that eyes turned gray, Sandra told me. What dictated the rhythm was what the bodies concealed during those hours. The three of them would finish without speaking, their dialogue with gazes sunk in eternal or nonexistent horizons.

Boobs that are eyes, a dog sniffing another dog, tigers, hearts, repeated silhouettes, hunched over, shadowless mountains, lines, worms. Whatever it is, it's just a pretext. The transcendental, Madero places it in the movement toward the threshold where bones dissolve and blobs of color appear as lakes where our eyes return to being baby eyes, in a proprioception where there are no hierarchies, where any element has the power to expand into bubbles that burst our childhood wonder.

Pintura para bebés can be visited at Proyecto Mono Rojo (Eligio Ancona 232, Santa María la Ribera) until July 17. By appointment at IG @proyecto_monorojo

— Fernanda Ballesteros

Translated into English by Luis Sokol