Several of the large-format and standard-size paintings of Javier Cruz that form part of the show called La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream) present the four elements (earth, water, air, fire) and some of the structure that give shape to the play La vida es sueño from Calderón de la Barca. The artworks collect the experience of painting and the canvas, that apparently flat surface that has a scarcely discernible weave, is where the painter's 'I' acts, and that 'I' is eminently visual but also mental, manual and made of several psychical strata. It might be said that the first stratum is formed by the artist's visual culture.

It perhaps happens that the creative process of painters, such as Javier Cruz and other of his contemporaries, is not the result of turning their back to reality, but of giving it a ... specific visibility, a structure, certain features that are above all meant to satisfy the painter's own vision.

In Javier's paintings, colors-even if they are made by Winsor and Newton-tend to bring to memory 'natural' hues: earth, dust clouds, air, water, dry shrubs, sometimes flames; in essence, the light reflected by certain surfaces, the semidarkness that one can glimpse in others, or the absolute forcefulness of the essential dichotomy: black and white, perhaps reminiscent of a graphic tradition that started with wood engravings, a procedure that doesn't admit halftones. His model is alternative but it is also kept in check by sequences that change with each painting. His creations are, or might have been, figures of desire.

Javier Cruz is not an illustrator. He is a painter of episodes that got engraved on his mind.