It was only recently that I became aware of Juan Esguerra’s amazing graphic work and illustrations. With a background of traveling and migration, he has been reading and drawing for many years making hybridity, mystery and utopian combinations come alive to the eye, no longer an abstraction in the viewer’s brain. Caught in their emergence from a field of vivid color that could remind one of a commercial poster, the mythological creatures display unself-conscious stances and gestures, acquiring an engaged materiality and corporeality that stimulates the mind. What is interesting about the mythological beings he puts on paper is their wholeness and aura of utterly belonging to nature, they are in no way disconcerting or dystopian, they don’t elicit fear in the viewer but rather a kind of longing, as though the viewer were receiving a postcard revealing the existence a friend they didn’t know they had. The Dreaming Machine is proud to feature a small photo gallery from his series Mythologies and one from his miscellaneous collection. You can find his work at https://juanesguerra.infy.uk/
