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Carrer Monistrol 21, 08012, Barcelona 
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NOT YET
Jan Vallverdú | Co-curated by Alex Belli

22.05.2025 - 31.07.2025
Carrer Monistrol 21, 08012 Barcelona

We are not here to describe, nor to repeat. Nor to trap in these paintings what cannot be trapped. We are here to understand the gesture. For in these works, the gesture insists.

Again and again… in consistency, a mute impulse takes root.
We are in a hurry. It’s a symptom.
We need time, but we want facts.
A mundane contradiction.

This habit does not find balance. On the contrary, it sharpens tensions, provokes differences, goes deeper. Painting will not consist in representing a prior model or an inner image, but rather in being a means to refine the body — the material, the gaze, the composition.

Each time I go deeper, I find more.
It’s natural, organic.
It’s not about expanding for the sake of expanding, about outsmarting the algorithm… that’s an easy way
to choke.

The technique sharpens by intuiting a direction, without knowing more. One also learns
to try, to feel one’s way forward. Inventing the core of some bodies, stretching and erasing lines… Unconscious records. Traces of action. Escapes that may be beginnings, or not.

It is more about the longing to arrive than the longing to finish.

The technique sharpens, as I said, and new, more precise tensions rise. One paints forces.

One must be humble in accepting the ways of the process. You can be skeptical. But here, self-deception is of no use. What’s artificial is believing I can fully speak about what I’m doing.

“NOT YET” is not a slogan of waiting. It is self-reading. It is simply, not yet. It is the
acceptance of the internal movement of things. It’s not a lack of form, nor a promise of
a future form. It is inhabiting this moment in which not yet — and for that very reason,
always more.

Coming and going, withdrawing, restraining, surpassing, accepting, etc.

The paintings are territory.

It’s always too late to say exactly what we would like to say.

For purchase inquiries & catalogue requests, 
contact us at hello@betacontemporary.com