The Poetry of Everything Exhibition, Denmark
Collective Exhibition at Liza’s Gallery in Møn, Denmark. June-August 2025
Roar Kjærnstad, Ina Christensen, Liza Krügermeier and Alex Pascual
Everyone is warmly welcome
LIZA'S GALLERY
4780 Stege - Møn, Denmark Tel: + 45 40 74 71 22
info@lizasgallery.com
Titan Contemporary Publishing, New Jersey, US
Alex Pascual is a figurative and interior draftsman working with color pencils who has exhibited in London, Newcastle, Berlin, and Kettinge, Denmark. Notable exhibitions include venues such as the Embassy of Brazil, Gallery Heike Arndt in Berlin, and Gallery Heike Arndt in Denmark. Alex has been featured with an article in Creative Boom magazine and he has been nominated for the Trinity Buoy Drawing Prize twice.
These color pencil renderings tend to depict women in isolated and enclosed interior spaces. Alex’s interiors and figures are highly distorted as if the image were pinched from a corner, containing elastic and angular curvature and focal points. His colors are often muted and toned down followed by strategic spaces filled in with white and subjects outlined with black lines. The women contained in the compositions convey body language which evoke melancholiness, sadness, despair, mourning, and perhaps even trauma. Such body language includes curling up in a ball on the bed, placing their heads down, or closing of the eyes.
Inspired by great 19th century masters such as Pierre Bonnard and Éduard Vuillard, Alex applies his own personal interpretation of how figures interact with their environments. Wearing contemporary attire with modernistic interiors , the women in Alex’s drawings are a reflection of current times. From depictions of skinny jeans hanging in a closet to lingerie as well as Adidas slippers and shoes placed on the floor, the interiors remind us of their contemporary inclinations and references. These sketchy and expressive interiors and women contain a variation of color derived from the imagination and design elements rather than of observation. Alex’s subjects contain a smooth blend of pale hues followed by thin irregular outlines of black indicating a separation of form. The play on perspective remains quite interesting with rooms and beds appearing to distort in ways as if to follow the angular limbs of the figures or to enhance the composition. Through stretching and weaving, the planes are guided towards angles which remain flat as well as directed towards our attention.
Sleeping on a Striped Blanket (pictured above) remains one of Alex’s most distorted figurative renderings. The woman, with her comfortable home attire, lays on a bed in a stiff position, however due to the angle of the bed she appears as if standing at an angle. Her cool tan, bright red cheeks, and bright red hair indicates she spends much of her time outdoors, whether at the park or the shore. She places her hands towards the stomach as if she were in the early months of pregnancy or expressing a mood of discomfort. The figure rests peacefully despite her hand gestures as the erratic bed follows the angular proclivity of her form.
Alex Pascual’s drawings are deeply expressive gestures in figurative language in regards to expressing sorrow and pain. Instead of depicting darkness, he chooses subdued, pale colorful tones to reflect these moody works along with spaces which reflect hallucinogenic, elongated visual interferences. With a sense of poetry and a reflection of everyday life, he chooses to express beauty and psychology in the forms of delicate, beautiful women interacting with enclosed interiors. Through isolating body language and sharp, penetrating perspective, Alex balances out his roughly sketched subjects with a soft color palette reflecting a balance in subtlety and sensitivity to light.
https://www.titancontemporary.net/single-post/alex-pascual
Creative Boom Article, UK
Alex Pascual's distorted drawings are a diary of the beauty in everyday life
Originally from Spain, where he studied illustration at the University of Barcelona, Alex moved to the UK in 2011. Living in London before heading up to Glasgow has profoundly impacted Alex's art style, but the humble act of making marks with a pencil is a through line that ties all these locations together.
"Drawing is a fundamental part of my practice," Alex tells Creative Boom. "It's a very flexible medium. You don't need too much preparation to start. You can draw while sitting on the couch, travelling on the train, or cooking in the kitchen. You can draw with an ordinary pencil and a piece of paper.
"Drawing is simple because you put one line after the other, but at the same time can become very complex. Also, drawing is the oldest medium; humans probably started drawing before speaking."
Alex's interest in drawing began with sketching everyday things like objects, interiors and friends. It's a habit which has clearly stuck with him, as now his drawings document the bedrooms, kitchens, and sleeping friends that populate his life. "There is beauty in those small things," he adds. "Working with my everyday is a way to search for beauty in those domestic and ordinary things."
Inspired by the paintings of Pierre Bonnard and Éduard Vuillard, both of whom depicted domestic interiors and intimate spaces, Alex takes a similar approach when creating his drawings. Just as they transformed supposedly redundant elements like rugs or wallpaper patterns into central motifs, so too does Alex unearth the hidden aesthetic qualities of objects constantly in front of him, whether a bottle of Fairy liquid or an overflowing laundry basket.
"Friends or people close to me are part of my everyday life and help to give scenes something more," Alez adds. "In addition to this, I have moved from many different cities and houses in the last twelve years. Drawing some of those moments has been like a personal diary.
"Every drawing I have made recalls something I have lived, and I love it when one of those drawings flies away and hangs in another person's house. Then that drawing becomes part of someone else's everyday life."
When it comes to the abstractions in Alex's drawings, these appear to be the perfect middle ground between drawing without reference and copying from reality, both of which present their own problems. "The challenge was how to use and transform reality into my own language," he explains.
According to Alex, distorting the everyday involves paying close attention to all the little details that come to you effortlessly. "All those little gestures and repetitions that continually appear in your drawings; those are indicators, clues you must follow," he reveals.
"In my case, there was a natural tendency for deforming and distorting things. The origin of that distortion came from wanting to highlight and exaggerate parts that instinctively seemed attractive or more interesting to me. Exaggerating also refers to emotions that you keep and let go of."
He adds: "The first five to ten minutes of each drawing create the direction. This is a time for speculation. Lines move fast from one side to the other. The rest of the drawing elements adapt to that first guidance. Breaking perspectives also allows me to escape from the conventionality of a single point of view."
As for his use of colour, Alex looks to modernists like Gauguin and Van Gogh. "You can identify their paintings from a mile away." However, he also finds inspiration in the exquisite pencil drawings of Klimt and Schiele, as their mastery elevated their simple sketches into works of art.
"When I start a drawing, I begin with intensive lines that define my intentions," says Alex. "Those lines are playful, sensitive and crude at the same time. The colour quickly appears mixed with the pencil lines and sometimes covers them. Adding colour and keep drawing is something that happens simultaneously. Colour selection is intuitive. There is no premeditated plan. Using vivid colours helps me to create my particular narrative."
Colour was also something that Alex integrated naturally when living and working in Barcelona. "The sun is up there constantly and influences your eye perception," he says. "But also, hot weather can affect your focus and concentration."
There's no fear of burning up in the comparatively cooler Glasgow, which has surprising benefits. "Living in the UK gave me the focus I needed; you tend to spend more time at home," Alex concludes. "It feels like hours are longer. Honestly, I love rainy days for drawing.
"Looking back, I consider the six years I spent working in the studio I rented in north London as crucial for my development. My drawings started changing, and I felt so comfortable with my style. I began to work with small formats, putting in more energy and being more productive. My everyday started merging with Mediterranean memories."
Daily Life Puzzles
I am happy to have signed a Licensing Agreement with the German Publisher HEYE-Athesia Kalenderverlag to produce a Daily Life Collection featuring two puzzles based on my drawings.
"Girl by the river" and "Laundry day in North London".
You can buy them here
Thank you :)
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023
The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize is the UK's leading award in contemporary drawing.
I am happy to have been selected again, as it is always a challenging drawing competition for the number of entries each year.
In 2021 was "Staircase in North London", and in 2023 "Messy Kitchen in Glasgow". Both were domestics drawings. I left those houses behind, but the drawings remain like a diary.
The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 exhibition will be launched at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London on 27 September 2023 and will then tour several venues across the UK.
Showing six drawings at The Biscuit Factory in Newcastle
From 2020 to 2022, I made numerous drawings between Bethnal Green in East London and Cricklewood in North London. It was a very prolific time. Six of those drawings are exhibited at The Biscuit Factory in Newcastle.
The Biscuit Factory is the UK’s largest independent contemporary art, craft, and design gallery, located in the heart of Newcastle’s cultural quarter. Housed in a former Victorian warehouse, the beautiful gallery spaces are spread over two floors and display a range of contemporary fine art, sculpture, original prints and jewellery, quality craftsmanship, and design-led homewares.
Open Daily 10 - 5 | Free Admission | Free parking | Ramp and lift access | 5 minutes from Newcastle city centre | Cafe and rooftop terrace
Thank you, Sam Knowles, for your support.