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Manuel Aja Espil

@manuelajaespil

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#PKFGrantee: @ManuelAjaEspil “Ozymandias” is now on view @HutchinsonModern in New York.

Drawing thematically from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s eponymous 19th-century poem, Aja Espil’s nine paintings convey the sublime power of nature, presenting it as a force superior in strength to human civilization.

Check out Aja Espil’s eerie and evocative landscapes through January 31, 2026.

Photos courtesy of Hutchinson Modern & Contemporary

#PollockKrasnerFoundation #ManuelAjaEspil #HutchinsonModern Painting by Manuel Aja Espil of a tall mountain under a blue sky with a comet, depicted with sharp, towering features and surrounded by jagged mountains. by @manuelajaespil

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10 months ago

The digital catalogue for Manuel Aja Espil: Ozymandias is now available at the link in bio.

Read this excerpt from critic and curator Renato Fumero's text "Ozymandias, by Manuel Aja Espil":

"Aja Espil’s works do not belong to the Romantic canon, and yet, as in that tradition, landscape emerges through an exercise of subtraction. The characters that animated his earlier series—scenes of carefully calibrated drama—have vanished from his canvases. Without them, the backdrop has emancipated itself, acquiring greater narrative depth and complexity. Nature becomes the protagonist. This shift, like everything in Aja Espil’s work, unfolds as a matter of pure pictoriality. A refined chromatic exploration (pinks and blues for skies, browns and greens for forests, nocturnal blues and grays, alpine light blues and whites) guides the viewer through sublime geographies of the artist’s own invention."

Learn more about the artist by viewing his virtual Study Room at Hutchinsonmodern.com

Visit us Tuesday–Saturday, 11am–5pm, or by appointment.

@manuelajaespil @rena_mf @isabellahutchinson by @manuelajaespil

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a year ago

by @manuelajaespil

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3 days ago

Red Paintings. (2026)

I painted these for ARCO Madrid this year. Wanted to try out something ...

60 cm x 37 cm (x4) by @manuelajaespil

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19 days ago

Ruinas en la Cordillera de los Andes
Óleo sobre lino, 180,5 cm x 152 cm.
2025

De la muestra EN UN TIEMPO SIN PASADO (Gachi Prieto, 2025) by @manuelajaespil

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5 months ago

Recordando Telúricos: proyecto que exhibí en Balcony Gallery, en Lisboa, en 2024.

Lindos recuerdos 🧡

La obra es: Force Majeure (Telúricos #3). Óleo sobre lino, 156 cm x 184 cm

@balcony_gallery
@pedro_magalhaes_art by @manuelajaespil

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5 months ago

¡Pandemia! (2020/1)

Seis años atrás, en pandemia pintando ¡Pandemia!

A principios de la Cuarentena en Buenos Aires soñé que veía en la orilla del río Danubio una casa invertida y unos personajes que se escondían en el bosque. Ese sueño fue la idea germinal de esta obra que luego me pasé un año pintando. ¡Pandemia! absorbió las ideas y experiencias de ese extrañísimo año. El año que todos hemos olvidado, y sin lugar a dudas los años que siguieron no hicieron más que someterlo al olvido. Pero en esta obra -me gusta creer- quedó grabado algo de todo lo apocalíptico y esperanzador, utópico y mortal de ese año. by @manuelajaespil

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6 months ago

Madrid visit with HM&C artist Manuel Aja Espil

Read a short excerpt from the artist on his creative process:

"I imagine all of my landscapes, because, I like to imagine them. I love going on trips to a remote place and sketching what I see. That way I always remember what I saw in quite a great amount of detail, by drawing it on the spot. This way I would capture the things that I find most relevant in that which is in front of me. If I see a tree, the shape of its trunk, its leaves; if it is a slope how the bushes interrupt the greenery, the shapes that its changing texture creates; and if it is a mountain then the way its rock comes out, its fissures, its shape against the sky, where would the snow concentrate if it is in high altitude. So, this way when I am at the studio and want to create a landscape, I have many tools, many…resources."

HM&C recently held a solo exhibition for the artist, "Manuel Aja Espil: Ozymandias"

@manuelajaespil @isabellahutchinson taken in Madrid,Spain by @manuelajaespil

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7 months ago

Thank you to all of our visitors who came to see “Manuel Aja Espil: Ozymandias”

Manuel Aja Espil was a 2024 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grantee, and prior to that he has been an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grantee two consecutive years.

A digital catalogue is available with an exhibition text by curator and critic Renato M. Fumero. Learn more about the artist by viewing his virtual Study Room at Hutchinsonmodern.com

Image 1: “Opening reception for Manuel Aja Espil: Ozymandias at HM&C”

Image 2: Fanny Sanín and Mayer Sasson, and HM&C artist Juan Sánchez

Image 3: Susan Hapgood, Director of the ISCP, where Manuel was a resident in 2022

Image 4: Maria Castro, Met Museum Associate Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art

Image 5: A very special visit from the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) Propel Fellows

Image 6: Julio Mitchel, photographer

Image 7: Alexandra Goldman, Senior Development Manager at El Museo del Barrio

@manuelajaespil @isabellahutchinson by @manuelajaespil

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9 months ago

OZYMANDIAS

Last weeks to see Ozymandias at @hutchinsonmodern .

As I was thinking what to paint for this show back in 2024 I imagined turbines, airplanes, spaceships lying on the ground, dead, deprived from their utility and their symbolic meaning, their projection of power and human ingenuity. No longer machines but something closer to hieroglyphs, brushstrokes on the landscape, ghosts… These are the products of dreams that ultimately became the instruments for war and relentless power, and through painting they would become obsolete, like some useless furniture growing mold on some wasteland engulfed by nature’s pervasiveness.
And next to the colossal wreck of Today, the words of Shelley still resonate:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

You can visit the show before January 31st at 47 E 64th St by @manuelajaespil

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9 months ago

"Manuel Aja Espil: Ozymandias" is on view at Hutchinson Modern & Contemporary through January 31st

Ozymandias is the second exhibition of Aja Espil’s work at HM&C. On view are nine new paintings that draw thematically from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s eponymous 19th-Century poem. Like Shelley’s Ozymandias, Aja Espil’s paintings assert the sublime power of nature, and posit it as a force superior in strength to human civilization. The artist’s new works comprise eerie, evocative landscapes embedded with fragments from the present industrial age—many having succumbed to the corrosive forces of time and nature. Together, these images seem to act as missives from the future; they encourage us to examine the ultimate consequence of humanity’s current trajectory, while underscoring art’s uniquely potent capacity to examine, to memorialize, and to mediate between unequal forces.

A digital catalogue is available with an exhibition text by curator and critic Renato M. Fumero. Learn more about the artist by viewing his virtual Study Room at Hutchinsonmodern.com

Image 1: Aja Espil in his Madrid Studio
Image 2: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

@manuelajaespil @isabellahutchinson by @manuelajaespil

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9 months ago

OZYMANDIAS

The Silicon Gardens (I)
Oil on linen, 23 1/4” x 37 7/8”
(2025)

The Silicon Gardens (II)
Oil on linen, 23 1/4” x 37 7/8”
(2025)

On view at @hutchinsonmodern through January 31st by @manuelajaespil

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