Xabier Toubes is a strong advocate of the manual and a stronger advocate of the emotional. His works radically challenge preconceived ideas of ceramics and their uses. He is one of the main players in contemporary Spanish ceramics. He has been striving to renew the genre for years, from his position as a teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago and a member of the management staff of the European Ceramics Workcentre in the Netherlands. He started out working in photography and painting, but he sees his works as sculptures and does not like to be referred to as a potter. He says that his path as a creative artist leads him to explore 'beyond the limits'. This is something that many artists are currently seeking to do, and there is great emphasis on ceramics and arts & crafts.

Water-Yellow (1992) and Grapes (1992) were made at a time when objects, sculptures and colours were regarded with suspicion in the context of art, especially when they were hand-made in clay. He says that the five ceramic pieces are both sculptures and paintings. His intention is to show that the process and the construction of an object have a meaning in themselves. The pieces are metaphors for the body and for eroticism. They feature artificial, matt colours dominated by sympathy for the absurd and the theatrical, the existential and the poetic, and by a quest for beauty. Toubes explores materials and reveals their technical and aesthetic potential. He models roughly, with hollows and protuberances, producing a degree of random chance that gives complete freedom of interpretation. In his own words, 'great importance is given to the process of discovering and abandoning, of not knowing as potential and possibility. With the senses and for the senses'.

Xavier Toubes trained at Goldsmiths’ College at the University of London, where he started studying in 1977, and went on to study at the State College of Ceramics of the Alfred University in New York. His works can be found in numerous collections around the world. Recent solo exhibitions include shows at the Luis Seoane Foundation (A Coruña, 2005) and the Centre for Contemporary Art of Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, 2007).

Beatriz Espejo