“you Remember that silly question we asked of children: What weighs more? Do a kilo iron or a kilo of straw…?”. Francisco Leiro (Cambados, 62 years) do not want anything that dilemma child ponder your own sculpture. But it may take trying to respond to the enigma’s entire life. “Iron, of iron”, would answer, some. They fell into the trap. Leiro has not been knocked-out of those networks. Within that game indeterminate and paradoxical of slips between the mass and the volume, the artist gallego gives life to his creatures.
last Friday, he posed while explaining his work spring Roll. “Gives a bit of creeps, no?”, he says as he watches the elderly woman who takes a body that refuses to be kidnapped, wrapped in a sort of carpet. Is installed in one of the corners of the Tabacalera in Madrid. There exposed up to the November 10, Roteiro, 80 pieces that fill a space with soil resistance test of some of his work: especially when these exceed 3,000 pounds. Between the wood and the granite, amongst the booty captive of the forest and the artillery of the dark stone, Leiro seeks and reaches thousands of souls in the street. But refuses to explain their meanings. “Lose the grace”, he says. As you do not know, or does not give the win to modulate the voice —“that is why I stopped to go to confession, because I could not tone it down”, he says, while offering some clue, are joining the visit a good handful of onlookers.
The artist’s guide between your work without taking off the raincoat. Start by Leviathan: a huge whale that you receive in the lobby, stuck in its rocky skeleton outlining in favor of the law of gravity. Follow with Lazarus in a row, a true symbol of the path: don’t stop get out of the tomb to base those pirouettes, which fought its own battle between the life, resurrection and death. “So, are comedians, if you had made them larger would be terrifying. Sometimes, when atormentas the sculpture has its interest.”
Apart from the Gospel, Leiro tracks miracles among the classic mythology. It does so with Vulcan, a warrior carbonized in motion. “Here, between these pipes, you gain strength, although it may seem a failure, this god of fire who has been burned by the flames.” To the side of that violence sinister that moves the figure left the veil poetry of Rosalía de Castro with Maio Longo, a sculpture that evokes the poem of the author galician: “Maio longo… maio longo”, /all covered with roses, /for some fabrics morte; /outros fabrics vodas”.
Drawings from the series ‘Seedlings’, by Francisco Leiro.
the olimpos pagan literature, of the old masters Dutch, Van Gogh, next to his easel transformed into a machine gun and Goya with their onesies to the avant-garde, the voyages of Leiro try to explain the world of today with the tools that you choose without giving up nor at random: “sometimes I’m working on a figure without knowing where it takes me and go someone in my study that the you choose for me: Damn, looks like Columbus! And I follow that track”.
What he had said at an effigy of the pioneer along to another of Marilyn, which we recognize by its skirt in the wind, carved in pine wood.Starts with a drawing. “As if it were the calligraphy of what then comes out,” he says. The intention is inside of him: “I don’t like telling it, the audience should see beyond of what I propose”. Comes a bull that pursues a few passers-by. The movement of the animal, more ethereal, reminiscent of the sculpture that looks to the entrance of Wall Street. “It’s called Moody’s… I don’t have more to explain, right?”. It is clear. The years Leiro has passed in New York catapulted the career of this spaniard that decided to attack the art world with his irony forceful and voluminous, without giving up the roots.
But also filled him with the eyes of road kill not far from the Tribeca neighborhood, where he lived: “nowhere have I seen beggars like those, never,” he says. Today he takes refuge between his studio in madrid, a car repair shop remodeled close to The Sales where he parks the movement talkative and phantasmagoric creatures and their ships in Cambados. There is often unravel the gordian knot of his identity. “I go and I come,” he says. But there is always something of yours within that weight relativized by the volumes of his allegories.
