The Exvotos, the creators of the ceramic heads that drive the Spanish jet crazy

Their ceramic heads, at prices between 100 and 700 euros a piece, are sold like hotcakes and you can find them the same at the home of

who has declared herself a superfan of the duo formed by

and

who in that of the socialite

We talked to Sevillians The Exvotos about their heads (the ceramic ones, and theirs) and their projects beyond the object that has raised them to fame (hopefully not the one that, as

and

is a bad lover and as it comes it goes).

"They take them from my hands" was what Susana Beltrán

came to tell me ,

from the exclusive Madrid store La Californie when he told me about your heads and their dazzling success.

It can be said that you are in the best houses, which was said before.

How do you feel? We are excited, it is incredible that our work has caught on with people with a sensitivity for art and good taste.

Any client is of course welcome and we give the same dedication to the prince and the dentist.

What they tell us when they receive our sculptures is moving and gratifying that all the delicacy and feeling that you have put into your work reaches the client and knows how to appreciate it. You have 20 years (of the company) behind you.

How big are the heads, how did they come about? 18 years have passed since the first container head we made, it came about because of our fascination with popular religiosity,

studying the art of different civilizations and especially the Mediterranean.

This head of ours is like the ones that were made in the Roman Empire or the Tartessians, votive offerings to the gods, hence our artistic name.

Luciano Galán and Daniel Maldonado, the artists behind The Exvotos.TE

And its success?

How do you interpret it? We believe that the person who sees them for the first time already feels them as something of their daily life.

They have elements that are quite recognizable by our subconscious, because we have studied them and we have lived with them. This success is also part of the boom that ceramics is experiencing and that has brought it back to the forefront.

Do we want unique things? We are not artisans, we are artists who use artisan techniques to carry out their work, we have chosen ceramics as the main material of expression precisely because it is a technique that gives you an exclusive result.

Every time you fill an oven you never know what the fruit will be, even if you use the same proportion of element.

This gives a unique character to each sculpture.

And yes, we all want to surround ourselves with unique things that set us apart from others.

Your work is Sevillian to the core but also very Italian. Our work does not seem Sevillian, it is Sevillian, I assure you, we impregnate our sculptures and objects with the color and feeling of the south, it is something totally intentional.

We live in Seville by choice and a lot of effort and that shows in our work, as does Italy, because one of the two is of Italian descent and we are also very influenced by classical art. Anyway, seeing your work I have the impression that the heads 'do not let us see the forest' (like the musician who has a hit and you miss everything else extraordinary he does).

What do you now put your creative energies into? We work a lot on the unique sculpture that we sell once it is made,

the decoration of walls as a canvas and the creation of furniture for rooms such as fireplaces or tables, as well as the making of fabric wall hangings.

We are also experimenting with wax, to see what results it gives us for a new object. Another of your lines of work is saints, quite disturbing by the way.

It's a little scary when those 'old fashion' saints look up at you.

Who are they for, who buys them?

They are between the religious article and the avant-garde art object. You have described it perfectly, they are between the religious article and the art object.

One of our main sources of creation is popular religiosity and this does not leave the viewer indifferent, it produces tenderness, confusion and even fear.

They are sculptures and metaphysical objects that leave no one indifferent.

The clientele is the most modern and also the most classic, some buy it out of fascination and others want to say an Our Father to it.

Religion will never leave the human being indifferent, it is carried in the mass of the blood for better or for worse.

Some of the members of the saints of The Exvotos.TE workshop

Inevitable to ask: in a time when it is easy to offend, has anyone been offended by your chandeliers with black heads? That would be our last intention, to offend anyone.

Our art does not live on provocation.

As we have said before, we are inspired by the religious theme and we have to be careful because it is a very sensitive topic.

The same goes for race.

Our sculptures speak of feelings, not ranks, we model blacks, Chinese and Caucasians with the same feeling, our blacks are kings of exotic countries, our Chinese alchemists and our Caucasians princes or gods, for example.

We go through times when many people have too thin skin, without thinking that what they do is exclude instead of protect.

The universe of The Exvotos

The Exvotos workshop at Calle Castellar 33 in Seville is a stage where its ceramic pieces, their container heads, candlesticks, saints and saints, stipes, mythological beings, skulls, crockery... stage the sensitivity, tastes and obsessions of these artists who have brought back to life, with grace and a twist of modernity, but without irony, a long tradition of sumptuous ceramics, on the one hand, and a past of traveling objects, at times dreamlike, with an unmistakable colonial air.

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