The work titled “Dream“, created in 2025 by Cesc Abad, is a 33.5 x 9.5 x 9.5 cm ceramic sculpture, preserved in excellent condition. This piece stands out within the artist’s corpus for integrating more explicit narrative and symbolic elements, combining his characteristic grotesque and satirical style with direct references to the imagery of desire and fantasy.
The nude male figure is crowned with a yellow tiara, placing him in the ambiguous role of king or jester. His body, with disproportionate and expressionist shapes, rests on a large white egg dotted with colored spots, on whose surface the word “DREAM” stands out in raised gold and red letters. This inscription connects with Abad’s usual irony: the “dream” is not represented as something ethereal and sublime, but rather held by a grotesque, obese figure with a vacant gaze and ambiguous gesture, laced with dark humor.
The multicolored base, in shades of green and blue with splashes of color, reinforces the work’s festive yet chaotic character. The pictorial treatment, with stains and drips, recalls both Abstract Expressionism and the spontaneity of folk ceramics, while the yellow crown becomes a contemporary nod to the iconography of authority, transformed here into parody.
“Dream” fits into Cesc Abad’s line of work, where the male body—distorted, exaggerated, comical, and critical—functions as a distorted mirror of society and its ideals. The use of the egg as a support is not accidental: it alludes to origin, fertility, and creation, but here it is colonized by words and figures, transforming the symbol into a hybrid of the sacred and the banal.
The piece can be related to European satirical artistic traditions, from Goya’s “caprichos” to popular carnival sculptures, and to contemporary art that explores the tension between kitsch and criticism. Abad manages to bring the dreamlike and the grotesque together in a single object, generating a work charged with irony and open meaning.
