ARTTYCO TALKS
Juanma Lorenzo explores impermanence, materiality, and the intuitive gestures that shape their layered works — offering a space to experience the subtle dialogue between process, body, and time.
ARTTYCO TALKS |
EPISODE #26: JUANMA LORENZO
1. How does the idea of impermanence —expressed through construction and deconstruction and deeply rooted in Buddhist philosophy— shape your creative process, and what has working with openness to error and the unexpected taught you about how the work ultimately reaches the viewer?
J: Impermanence runs through my process because I work with materials already imbued with time: eroded papers, textures that fracture, layers that willingly accept being added and removed. In the studio, this dialogue between building and deconstructing becomes a mirror of my own inner world. Each layer I add is an affirmation; each layer I remove is an act of letting go.
In Buddhist philosophy, emptiness is seen as the possibility for transformation. My pieces are born precisely from this: from accepting that nothing is finished, that everything can be altered, and that the work—like oneself—is made by allowing oneself to be affected. The material forces me to listen and to relinquish the idea of control. When a fragment breaks, when a color fades, when an unexpected mark appears, I don’t correct it—I incorporate it.
This passage between appearance and disappearance is the work. And it is also my inner process. Creating, for me, is learning to accompany change without resisting it. Each painting is a negotiation with impermanence, and at the same time, a way of inhabiting it.
2. Your pieces seem to emerge from an almost choreographed movement across the studio floor, where the body becomes part of the process. What role do physicality and intuition play in the construction of your works?
J: I work on the floor because there the paint demands my full presence. My body comes into play: I move, turn, lean, letting the gesture find its own rhythm. I don’t follow a predetermined sequence or fixed method; it’s an intuitive, almost instinctive movement, where I allow the material to speak and simply respond.
Physicality is the way the work guides me. When I work like this, the mind stops imposing, and a direct dialogue emerges between body and materials. Sometimes the texture dictates the next gesture; other times, an unexpected mark opens a new path. My task is to listen, not to control.
The work arises from this exchange: from what the body proposes and what the material returns. That’s why each piece is, at its core, the physical trace of an intuitive state.
3. The materials—torn paper, pigments, ashes, graphite, wood, cement—play a central role in your visual language. How do you decide which materials to incorporate, and what meanings do they bring to your artistic exploration?
J: Materials enter the work because they allow me to transform the surface from within, not as a decorative addition. Although it may sometimes look like a collage, it isn’t: papers, posters, or wood go through a prior process where I intervene, paint, stain, wear down, and rework them—even after they have already been integrated into the painting. Each material thus becomes a living layer that I can continue touching, correcting, or eroding according to what the work demands.
It’s not so much about “choosing” the material for its meaning, but discovering what possibilities it offers when subjected to different processes. New paper can become old; ash can become skin; graphite can be shadow or structure. What interests me is how they respond to manipulation, how they transform, and what tension they create in relation to each other.
In this sense, meaning emerges from the dialogue with the material itself: from what resists, what breaks, what is revealed when scratched or covered. Materials do not illustrate a preconceived idea; they are the territory where the work finds itself, and where I too discover myself in the process.
4. Your works convey a sense of suspended time, almost meditative. What kind of experience do you hope to awaken in those who encounter your pieces, and how do you expect them to engage with the “silence” you propose?
J: I’m interested in allowing the viewer to pause for a moment, as if entering a space where time loosens. I don’t aim to direct the experience or provoke a specific emotion; rather, I hope each person finds their own rhythm within the silence the work suggests.
The layers, voids, erosions, and visual pauses are there to open a space for contemplation. If the work awakens something, I hope it invites an inner listening — a feeling of calm, suspension, or even a slight uncertainty. I’m not interested in explaining, but in offering a territory where one can remain a little longer than usual.
That silence is not absence; it is a threshold. The interaction I imagine is intimate, almost physical — like sensing a whisper rather than hearing a word. If the piece can make someone breathe differently while observing it, then the work is alive.
