C. de Sta. Isabel, 52, Centro, 28012 Madrid, Spain Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Juan Uslé That Ship on the Mountain | Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
“Boats on the Mountain” is a major retrospective celebrating over four decades of artistic career by Juan Uslé (born in Santander in 1954), one of Spain’s most internationally acclaimed artists. This exhibition comes twenty years after his first solo exhibition, “Open Rooms,” at the Reina Sofia National Art Center Museum.
The exhibition’s concept originates from the exhibition space on the first floor of the Nouvel Tower, aiming to explore the permeability and temporal extension often found in the artist’s compositions. The eleven galleries are presented in a non-linear narrative, like a short story constructed through back-and-forth travel, looking ahead, and looking back, subtly hinting at the connections between his paintings and other media. For example, the exhibition’s “Notes,” or “Picture Travel Notes,” exemplify this; these color test works have been categorized for years under the theme “Notes on SQR (I dreamt you were developing),” in addition to his textual and photographic works.
Regardless of their form, these notebooks have become a recurring mode of expression in Juan Usley's artistic practice, a means for him to record and experience his daily life: his travels, leisure time, studio work, and family life. Therefore, the significance of the images and stories contained in Usley's paintings, regardless of their form, lies not in their mutual influence, but in the subconscious connections they establish with the visible world, and the possibility of imagining other scenes where abstract language is linked to the representation of images that are thought, imagined, seen, or dreamed. Usley's artistic career began in his native Cantabria in the late 1970s, with early works characterized by dark tones and visual tranquility. He studied at the Valencia Academy of Fine Arts, developing a strong interest in abstract landscape painting and photography. Upon returning to Santander, he created some expressionist works, exhibiting them for the first time at the ARCO Art Fair in 1984. After moving to New York in 1987, his paintings began to explore more personal abstract expressions: brighter tones, grid-like backgrounds, and echoes of the powerful brushstrokes in de Kooning's later works. Usley's paintings gradually shifted towards a more lyrical and tranquil abstract style: abandoning sharp expression; expressiveness was simplified into rhythmic, meandering geometric lines, like the beating of a pulse. Compared to his earlier works, his creative process became more mechanized and procedural. The canvas was completely soaked in paint, down to the edges, with colors consisting of variations of a single hue; the paint was like a layer of skin covering everything, and the canvas was an eternal threshold leading to a place full of infinite possibilities, containing both dark areas and fleeting moments of brilliance.
Nov 26, 2025–Apr 20, 2026 (UTC+1)