Untitled

Patxi Ezquieta takes the following sentence as his own while acknowledging the Petronius’ authorship: Mundus vuit decipi; ergo decipiatur. Something that Ezquieta himself translates immediately as: “The world wishes to be deceived, so let’s deceive it.” According to this, is that how Ezquieta understands the work of the artist? It is difficult to answer if the sentence is not spelled out slowly and in all its solemnity. When cinematography appeared at the end of the 19TH century, two intuitive ways of dealing with the new invention arose. Some, the Lumières, sought to capture reality and they filmed trains, factories, people... Others, such as Méliès, tried to capture the unreal, the impossible, the incomprehensible and shot impossible journeys to the Moon, ghostly disappearances and cheap tricks. At that same moment, at this crossroads, an unresolved controversy arose: who cheats more, who turns his pre-warned deception into a journey into the world of dreams, or who seeks to collect —i.e., show— reality even though they know that escapes their own forces? Ezquieta certainly knows this paradox and has long practised a painting style that we could term dreamy.
He who warns is not scorned and Ezquieta as a painter shows amazing honesty. So much so that sometimes his painting ails from the excess of sincerity that dominates it. This work dated in 1995 is part of a special moment for him. After spending a long time in Tangiers, Ezquieta had decided to return to his place of origin. Someone keen to draw fast conclusions would say that Patxi Ezquieta’s fondness for storytelling fed on his African adventure, on his stay in streets similar to those described in One Thousand and One Nights recounted over and over again in the square in Marrakech, at dusk, when the desert licks the ramparts. But that is not true. It seems more reasonable to believe that the taste for fairy tales, for fantasy, was born with this painter who claims humour and fantasy as antidotes to taste the world. In this sense, this piece of organic forms, vague appearance, throws some keys on a palette of soft colours and suggestive, open forms. Something is emerging from the hangover of surrealism, i.e., that wanting to go beyond the reality that harboured and continues to harbour all conjurers of dreams who inhabit the reality surrounding us. Patxi Ezquieta, belongs to that legion of solitary individuals. He is a fabler endeavouring to deceive the world because he knows that the world, i.e, him, could not withstand the misery, pain and horror that live within him without stories.
Juan Zapater López