Clara Cebrián: “I don't like art only for artists”

Inside the home-studio of Clara Cebrián (Madrid, 32 years old) everything changes, nothing remains.

“It's a reflection of who I am, a very messy drawer full of things.

No rooms.

Everything has wheels.

“I can change my mind whenever I want,” summarizes the painter.

The bed hangs from the ceiling, very high, installed on a platform that is accessed by a portable ladder.

From this suspended bedroom you can access a small terrace from which you can see the roofs of Carabanchel.

It looks like an industrial warehouse, with unpolished floors, exposed beams and lots of light coming in through the skylights.

Her colorful paintings, in which she alternates between the abstract and the figurative, are everywhere.

It is the materialization of her way of understanding art: outside the usual circuits, without ties and in constant movement.

Because Cebrián does not have a gallery, he is not going to be in ARCO and he does not work in a permanent studio, but that does not mean that he is not successful: he recognizes that he now sells a lot in Austria and that there was a time when Mexico was his biggest market.

A kitchen shelf, where his works and pieces that he has accumulated on his travels are mixed. Antarctica

His art is itinerant and traveling, in the last year he has exhibited in Athens and Milan.

He spends time in different places around the world and the first thing he does when he arrives in a new place is visit the shops in the neighborhood where he settles in search of materials for his paintings.

She started 2024 working for the first time in Los Angeles and then settling in Mexico, a country that dazzled her when she was forced to spend the covid confinement there.

“It caught me in Baja California and now I always want to return, in 2023 I spent a few months in Mexico City, I really like it because everything is possible there, while in Europe everything is a no.”

She traveled to the city to participate in an art fair, she believes that these large events in the sector are necessary because of their energizing effect: “They are quite good because being an artist is a very solitary thing and they serve to create an ecosystem.

It is good that there are all sizes in different cities so that little by little if you are interested in that you can access this world.”

His bed is installed in a structure suspended from the ceiling and from it you can access a terrace.

Underneath he has placed a hammock. Antarctica

He focuses on the issue of loneliness, a constant in his practice.

“Being a painter is a very lonely profession.

You make the decisions alone, it's like being in a mirror maze.

I suppose other artists form a group, but painters... You don't go to the office and see people, sometimes I'm envious of that,” she explains.

Although he remembers that he began selling at a very young age, he is aware of the complexities of the art world.

“Until I was older I didn't think much about what it means to be a woman artist.

She thought 'what difference does it make'.

And of course, it is not the same at all, it is much more difficult, there is no open path and I am very intrigued by how this is going to change,” she comments.

She has read about artists she admires, naming Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin and Leonora Carrington among her references.

Some of the artist's sketches. Antarctica

During confinement, his relationship with the work changed, with the way he wanted to show it, in which he wanted to relate to his clients who, he acknowledges, often discover it through platforms like Instagram.

“Suddenly I started receiving a lot of messages from people who wanted to buy my work.

And therefore I entered a cycle in which I sold without the painting being seen by more people than me and the buyer, because it was not exhibited.

After three years of this system I got tired, I felt sad, I felt like I was a hamster on its wheel, you know?

Like I could be in this house, paint, send it, money would come to me.

And I realized that that was not the end.

That's why now I'm very interested in doing projects and exhibiting, I did one in Athens, another in Milan.

That more people can see it.

The world of the internet became a bit limited for me.”

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She is used to setting her own path, she did so when she went to study interactive design and image at the London College of Communication.

“I went to London because I am very, very dyslexic.

I tried to study here but they failed me in all the subjects, if you made a spelling mistake they took away points.

The Spanish system is not designed for someone with dyslexia and ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] like me.

She felt like she was doing everything wrong.

It was very square, when I am very into the game,” she laments.

She left when she was 18 and saw that there she could learn at her own pace.

“I'm interested in talking about this, I think society could change so much if education changed... There are a lot of people who feel like failures and frustrated when in reality they have a gift that they simply haven't let them find.

And you will not find it if from the beginning they tell you that you are doing it wrong.”

Clara Cebrián on her sofa, with some of her paintings.Antártica

Her family encouraged her since she was a child to enter the creative world.

“My father is an engineer but a poet and my mother had artist friends.

When they came home I said that I didn't want to be like them, because they dressed strangely, their houses were strange.

Being an artist seemed scary to me, actually.

It was an unknown world, not traditional.

I tried all kinds of work, graphic design, being an art director, but nothing worked for me... and from the very beginning of my career people bought paintings from me,” she recalls.

She grew up in the center of Madrid, in the Chamberí neighborhood, she was the youngest of three siblings, although almost an only child due to the age difference.

“In my house there was no contemporary art, but my father has a collection of flamenco art, there were objects from travels, from my grandparents...,” she says.

That visual memory forged the basis of her creations. She explains that she likes to “tell what everyday life is like in different places,” hence her stays in different cities.

“When I settle in a new place I like to see what materials are used in each place, face the city and what life is like there, go to the gas stations, I want to see everything and fill in the gaps, because I don't absorb it directly, but It enters like a drawer in my head, which is like a big soup, and from that soup I paint a lot of pictures.”

The power strips that Cebrián herself designs, with stones that she collects in the different places she passes through.

“I brought one stone from Bogotá, another is from Lake Sigüenza, in León, another from Istanbul...,” she explains. Antarctica

He has made everyday life his field of work.

“I think that may be because I don't yet feel ready as an artist to tackle bigger themes, of course I would love to paint what love means in a painting, but I feel like for now I can only represent love through eating breakfast.” with someone, about more tangible things, that everyone can understand without explaining it.”

In 2023 she held a group exhibition in Milan in which she showed gardens painted on the ground, in the manner of the impressionists.

In them you can see branches, trunks, chairs, bottles and plates.

This year she is going to focus on sports, “but almost from the perspective of an alien who comes to planet Earth and doesn't understand how humans entertain themselves with them, with all those shapes, colors and fields.”

She is going to explore the codes of different disciplines in a kind of anthropological study carried out with canvas and brush.

“I am very fond of the popular language.

I don't like art only for artists.

That is why I like music so much, which crosses barriers and speaks a language that unites people, it touches a point of the human being that fascinates me,” she comments.

Although she has a guitar in the corner of her house, she laughs at the question of whether she will make music one day.

She did create animations for the video of the song

Rainman

by her boyfriend, the Norwegian musician Erlend Øye (Kings of Convenience, The Whitest Boy Alive), and she also made a video for the Colombian experimental band Meridian Brothers.

“That was during my time in Bogotá!” She remembers with joy.

Now she is more in her Syracuse days, she admits: “My boyfriend bought a house there 10 years ago and when I go to the studio I have to take a little boat, it seems like an adventure.”

But she always returns to her Madrid base.

Clara Cebrián uses every corner of her home to create.

Her paintings can be seen on the walls as if it were a gallery where her work is exhibited.

She acquired the 100 square meter space in 2018 and her friend, architect Pía Mendaro, was responsible for the renovation.Antártica

“I bought it in 2018 and it is a place where my paintings and the things I buy around the world live, it is my base,” he explains.

Her friend, the architect Pía Mendaro, was the one who gave shape to Clara's idea.

“I didn't have to tell him anything, we've known each other since we were 12 years old.

We started to go upstairs and ended up doing this in what was going to be just a warehouse,” says the painter.

Other creatives live nearby; spaces for art continue to proliferate in this area of ​​southern Madrid.

“I came here because I discovered the artist Isa Alonso's space in Urgel, and then Casa Antillón.

It's difficult to dream in city centers, because there are many limitations, you can't park, it's expensive... Everything is already done there, you can't do things your way."

Cebrián wants to continue exploring, with the game as his mantra.

And she is not afraid of what many see as the great threat to the very concept of an artist, the rise of artificial intelligence: “I'm not afraid of it at all.

The most beautiful thing about being an artist is the human factor, I think it is impossible for a machine to replace you.

There are artists who want their style to be so iconic that in the end they repeat themselves, and perhaps artificial intelligence could continue to do that.

But if you're in check all the time, wondering who you are, I don't think it's a problem."

The bathroom, where the natural light that enters through the skylight in the ceiling commands.Antártica