Xavi Ceerre
- Anna Lilli Garai
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Xavi Ceerre paints by doing. He doesn’t plan everything ahead, just starts with a feeling and sees where it goes. Layers build up, get scraped away, and shift again. Working with oil has slowed things down and added new depth. His paintings mix memory, color, and energy—sometimes rough, sometimes calm, always in motion. He moves between structure and accident, trusting what happens along the way. Symbols appear and disappear, but the rhythm stays.
Q: Your paintings sit between impulse and control. How do you decide which one leads?
A: Lately, I spend a lot of time thinking about the paintings before I start them. I think about them for a few days in advance: what kind of colors to use, the composition, the process... Coming in with your homework done allows you to trust your impulses and chance much more. In the end, when we talk about impulse, I think we’re actually talking about entering a flow state. Maybe the dichotomy is more between action and reflection than between impulse and control.
Some time ago, I saw an interview with Joe Bradley in which he nailed this idea. He referred to it using the expression "sitting to painting ratio": the amount of reflection time spent on each painting — something that often gets overlooked. Oil painting encourages this kind of approach.
Right now, I’m working on several paintings at once, not just because of drying times, but also because, on one hand, it helps me detach emotionally from them, and on the other, I can glance at them sideways and keep working on them subconsciously.
The final days devoted to each painting are usually spaced out (sometimes with weeks in between) and are mostly for small touch-ups or removing parts.
In any case, I think that’s what’s interesting about a painting: it’s like looking at a fire. You’re looking at the same thing all the time, but it’s never the same.
Q: The "Reworked Garden" series brings oil paint into your practice for the first time. What changed with that shift?
A: I’ve been trying for a long time to understand this technique. Used to working with fast-drying media like acrylics, spray paint, or enamel, I had adapted to a rhythm that I had deeply internalized. That speed shaped the process, forcing me to work in layers and seek interaction between them in different ways, generally through monotype or overlapping brushstrokes.
Now, this interaction is enriched by new possibilities, such as the blending or absorption of particles from the studio itself, and I feel like everything is more alive.
With acrylics, I used to feel a lot of frustration seeing how the colors would fade and lose depth as the paint dried. With oil, that doesn’t happen — or at least, not as much. It’s a medium that preserves much better the properties it shows right after being applied to the canvas, and its range for adjustment is much wider — I’m referring to aspects like fluidity, gloss, viscosity, drying time, etc.
With oil, something special is happening to me: I feel like I’m in a world of novelty and discovery, which drives me to keep painting with curiosity, almost with more enthusiasm after each brushstroke.
Switching to this technique was a step I knew I would take sooner or later, and I tried to postpone it as much as possible. It’s like when everyone talks to you about a classic album, and you resist listening to it... until you finally feel like the time has come.
Q: You pull from graffiti, comics, outsider art. What makes something stick in your visual memory?
A: I take elements from graffiti, comics, and outsider art... but more than the styles, I’m interested in how these images communicate. In all of them, there’s a schematic, direct visual language that could be linked to what’s called “cartoon” in English: an expressive simplification that, in some way, defines much of Western visual culture.
I see myself as a collector. Like someone pushing a cart, gathering debris: visual fragments, broken symbols, scraps of shapes. With this, I build a kind of visual shack, a precarious structure but full of meaning. I think many of us — our generation — grew up surrounded by video games, screens, pixels… and that influence is there, underground. In my case, it manifests as a Tetris of images: I fit pieces together, searching for how they relate to one another.
I’m especially drawn to those images I don’t quite understand. Something that forces me to stop and ask myself what it means. Or something that, in relation to its context, takes on new meaning. Lately, I’ve been interested in macro-schematic forms: large prehistoric visual structures whose real meaning remains a mystery. There’s a game-like quality in the attempt to decipher them. And it’s there, in that play and in the rawness of the forms, where I think the most interesting part of pictorial language lies: it lets you create a system to then use as you wish.
Q: Your works hold layers—erased, redrawn, painted over. What does that repetition give you?
A: As I was saying, for me, painting is like sculpture: something that takes shape by adding and removing layers. That process of repetition — erasing, redrawing, overlapping — helps me enter a state of almost meditative concentration. I don’t usually work with a previous sketch, though I do make preparatory studies before and during.
I prefer the image to build itself in the doing, to surprise me.
The layers, the palimpsests, the corrections… all of that reconnects me with life itself, with that visual narrative where what is erased (hidden) or corrected is also part of the story. I’m interested in that living construction, in constant change.
I never know exactly what will happen in a piece or how it will turn out. And I like that. It’s more of a negotiation than control. It’s not about imposing a fixed design, but rather letting the image propose itself, let it dialogue with me.
The mistake, the repetition, the accident — all of that is part of the process.
Q: There’s a raw, almost childlike palette in this new work. What draws you to that kind of color?
A: I had been working a lot with the color black and felt the need to bring color back, to start fresh. I feel like new palettes are emerging within me. And I think this also has to do with the moment I’m going through: I’m in a good place, I’ve just become a father, and things are going well. Seeing my son’s amazement with primary colors deeply inspires me.
On the other hand, as I mentioned before, I had a certain experience with vibrant colors in acrylic: when applied, they looked amazing, but as they dried, they lost their intensity, became dull, and ended up looking like something else. This led me to explore a more neutral and pale palette. It was a way to adapt to the materials and use their limitations to my advantage.
Q: You talk about painting as resistance. What does that mean in your day-to-day practice?
A: I like to think that painting functions as an antagonistic force to words. To me, it feels more primal, ancient, and ethereal than verbal language. I believe that when art is put in the service of an idea, it loses some of its power in a certain way. It becomes explainable. While this can be valid on occasion, I find greater value in paintings that resist translation. Their significance comes from experiencing them in real life.
