Javier A. Greschitz De La Cruz (1999, Vienna) has, over the course of several years, developed a distinctive iconographic vocabulary centred on the recurring appearance of most prominently horses, cattle and dogs. These figures do not operate as allegories in a conventional sense, nor do they function merely as representational subjects. Rather, they constitute an affective and relational system through which questions of collective existence, vulnerability and belonging become materially negotiable. In Javier‘s paintings, the body emerges as a site where social, psychological and painterly structures intersect.