Untitled Painting

Central to Yázpik's oeuvre is an approach to materials that focuses on reverence for their natural qualities, on keen observation, and on a negotiation with the limits they impose. His work is often carried out by taille directe, without models, particularly when working with stone. This respect for the medium is often expressed as a subtle subversion, to uncover the material's internal paradox : crystal is subjected to lapidary tooling, like a precious stone, to achieve a more organic, prismatic and elemental appearance than traditional manufacture can produce jade and obsidian are presented in their unpolished majesty, revealing their crystalline luster only through carefully placed internal cuts ; wood is”petrified' into steles ; volcanic stone is often surgically deconstructed and reconstructed, preserving its original shape but now unveiling its gravitational burden. Every encounter with the material is approached by Yázpik, in his own words, by ”clearing a path," making great allowances for the fortuitous and accidental element. In the process of "vitalising"natural materials as prima materia, the artist negotiates cuts and carvings in the medium's own native language, in an interplay which is both instinctual and intellectual.