Visual artist Joan Priego Follow.Art Card

About me

“Man and Other Animals” by Joan Priego @joanpriego


Joan Priego is a Catalan sculptor working primarily with wood. His practice develops a figurative language that deconstructs the idea of a unified and morally stable personality. Remaining faithful to the material, Priego does not conceal the nature of recycled wood — he emphasizes it.

Old fragments, glued elements, rough and uneven surfaces: his figures are assembled rather than carved as monoliths. They are asymmetrical, unfinished, and unstable. Priego’s human figure exists in a state of inner tension, where instinct and social role, impulse and prohibition, strength and vulnerability collide. His sculptures do not depict the body as an object; they visualize consciousness in a state of conflict.

The exhibition is conceived as a natural science museum. Different species and forms of existence are presented, with man — divided, fragmented, and incomplete — becoming the central object of observation.

In this pseudo-museum, Priego studies not anatomy but inner dynamics: instincts, emotions, fears, and defense mechanisms. His characters appear as survivors of trauma, marked by rough textures and scar-like surfaces.