In 1977 Juan Uslé began the first work which would give rise to a series with the same name, Soñé que revelabas (I Dreamt You Were Developing), made up of more than fifty paintings to date. It is one of the most prominent series by the Cantabrian artist, who says he does not know how long he will continue it for; in it, he refers to the world of dreams and at the same time to the photographic process, the dark room.

Soñé que revelabas IV is one of the first works in the series; in it, he confronts us with a succession of bands mass produced to in turn shape a horizontal structure opposed to the verticality of the canvas. Dark hues that make up a territory of marks and routes, as he himself defines it. As well as the artistic creative process in itself, this large-format work – like the rest of the series – reflects an emotional process, the brushstroke follows the pace of the artist’s heart, thus turning into a register of his heartbeats.

In this series the Cantabrian artist again takes up the darkness already set forth in several works from the late ‘eighties, and stresses seriation and compositional unity. He repeats the process over and over in each work: adopting a format of large dimensions as the medium, applying the same technique and pictorial components of vinyl paint and pigments, and yet in each one Uslé underscores its singularity and uniqueness. He starts out with black as the essence of colour, highlights the horizontality with the thick brushstrokes, and even by applying certain hints of colour, but if we look at the details, he does not neglect verticality, which materialises through serialised short strokes.

S.H.