A few days before opening its new exhibition at Marquesa Gallery, José Luis Ceña talks with us about a series of works in which childhood, play and identity occupy a central place. Through his characteristic masked characters, the artist builds a universe where the human and the animal intertwine, inviting us to reflect on who we are and the masks we wear. An opportunity to get closer to the gaze of one of the Spanish figurative painters with greater international projection before the inauguration, on June 5.
What does it mean for you to present this exhibition at Marquesa Gallery at this point in your career?
Presenting this exhibition at Marquesa Gallery is a particularly significant moment in my career. It comes at a stage of artistic maturity where I feel that my visual language is more consolidated, but also more open to new questions. On the other hand I return to Carabanchel, which is the neighborhood that adopted me when I arrived in Madrid at the age of 15: in addition a Carabanchel turned into an incredible cultural forum in continuous growth.
For me it is not so much about showing results as sharing a research process that is still alive and that finds in this space an ideal context to converse with the public.
What has been the process of building this particular exhibition?
It has been a long and very organic process. Although some of the ideas had been accompanying me for some time, the exhibition has been built as the works began to dialogue with each other. More than starting from a concrete and closed concept, I have worked open to what each piece was demanding, allowing unexpected relationships and new lines of work to appear.
How would you like the visitor to tour the exhibition: there is a narrative or is it a freer experience?
There is an internal structure and certain links between the works, but I am not interested in imposing a single reading. I prefer that visitors build their own journey, that they discover personal connections and that they find spaces for interpretation. The exhibition proposes a framework, but the final experience is completed by those who visit it.
What do you think differentiates this exhibition from your previous works?
Perhaps this exhibition is one of the most personal I have done so far. Not because he speaks directly of me, but because he reflects on something that crosses us all: the need to build ourselves, to transform ourselves and to recognize ourselves in the other.
Jose Luis Ceña, Stillness before the dive, 50 x 50 cm. oil on linen, 2026
If someone leaves the exhibition with a specific idea or feeling, what would you like it to be?
I'd like him to come out with the idea of coming back in, of not knowing exactly what face he's been looking at. If the viewer leaves with some less certainty and a few more questions, the exhibition has probably fulfilled its function.
What part of this exhibition do you think speaks most about you as an artist today?
The way in which right and wrong coexist. The narrative and the visual. I am increasingly interested in that territory where the acquired knowledge meets the unknown. I think that tension is very present in this exhibition and reflects quite well my current position as an artist.
What are you obsessed with right now on a creative level?
I obsess over the idea of identity as something changing and in permanent construction. I am interested in thinking about it in a very close way to the pictorial process itself: both are open processes that are built through layers, decisions, corrections and successive transformations. Just as a painting never arises from a single image, but from the accumulation of gestures, successes, errors, comings and goings, our identity is also configured from experiences, memories, stories and the gaze of others. In that parallelism I find much of my creative interest.
Your work has something very recognizable. How did you build your own language?
I do not think that one’s own language is something that is consciously sought, but something that appears as a consequence of restlessness, research and the need to deepen certain issues.
How does a work of yours begin: with a clear image or with a more diffuse intuition?
It always starts with an idea. That initial idea leads me to make different preparatory sketches that, in many cases, are quite far from the final result. You have to make room for uncertainty, for things to happen during the process of creation, for magic. If we were to reproduce exactly the initial image, we would not be too different from a printer. For me, the really interesting thing appears when the work begins to take you to places you had not foreseen.
Jose Luis Ceña, Architecture for a domestic game, 100 x 100 cm. oil on linen, 2026
Which part of the process do you enjoy the most... and which one costs you the most?
I especially enjoy the moment when the work begins to reveal something that I myself had not foreseen: when the painting appears. It’s a kind of dialogue with one’s work. The most difficult thing is usually to know when a piece is finished, when you have to stop intervening and allow time to end it.
Do you work impulsively or is there a lot of planning behind each piece?
There is a combination of both things, when you have two children it becomes complicated sometimes to square the personal and professional life. This experience has taught me the importance of planning, especially in complex technical processes, but I also need to make room for accident, intuition and the unexpected. Many times the most interesting decisions appear precisely in those unexpected moments.
What interests you more: that someone understands your work or feels it?
I'm more interested in feeling it, no doubt. Intellectual understanding can enrich the experience, but I believe that a work begins to work when it generates an emotional resonance in the viewer.
What do you think makes someone connect with one piece of you and another doesn’t?
The connection to a work depends as much on the piece as on the personal experience of the viewer. Each person comes with a different story, sensibility and references. It is precisely this diversity of readings that is one of the things that interests me the most about art.
At what point do you feel this exposure leaves you looking at what comes next?
I do not feel it as an end point, but as another step within an investigation that continues open. Many of the questions that appear in this exhibition: identity, transformation, the relationship between what we show and what we are, continue to generate new questions. In some ways, this exhibition leaves me in uncertain territory, and that is precisely what interests me. I believe that artistic work consists in moving towards what we do not yet fully understand.