For the moment I leave you with the last of these keys that I have handled throughout our dealings, which are already starting to go on for a long time. I only wrote it down just before saying goodbye the last time I wrote publicly about the artist a few months ago, and here, for reasons of time and space, and also of strategy, I’m only going to repeat it, to say it out loud again. It is the one I have in my head every time I think of his work since he himself explained it to me on my last visit to his studio in Granada. We were talking about the works in the context of an exhibition project we had in hand; Jesús was capable of maintaining a demanding conversation while he drew without interruption and at remarkable speed with a practically worn-out felt-tip pen (it’s a technical trick from which he has made enormous profit).
‘Drawing’ means that he was planning the scene as he developed and resolved it, not just filling in or concluding what an already defined structure was guiding him. I was amazed by this, and just the fact that he was able to tackle and construct a complex drawing in its entirety while answering my questions with precision and depth, led me to be both in and out of a conversation in which he was fully engaged without interruption or loss of concentration. In the midst of my effort and his ease, Jesús told me, I don’t know in what words, possibly these: ‘Óscar, let’s see, after all, it’s the same as always: love and death’.
And I keep on going back to that rhyme; obsessively, without being able to get it out of my head. I just wanted to repeat it, in case it might be of any help to you, and I’m afraid with the secret hope of making you a little sick with it, perhaps so that the contagion might alleviate my viral load a little. Love and death are occupying everything in this work, don’t you see?
Óscar Alonso Molina
