José Quintanar

FARTLEK was a revolutionary training system for runners created by Gösta Olander in a tiny cabin of Volodalen, Sweeden, with the meaning of a speed game. During the sixties, the most important athletes visited Gosta during summer for training under this system. It was based on the recognition of the landscape and the personal introspection of the runner. The purpose of this training was not only to run faster or to keep a better physical condition. But also to change the way of running and to know oneself better. Or in another word, running as a alternative method of meditation.

FARTLEK is also an artistic project. It´s the experiment to translate this training method for runners into the exercise of drawing. During three years and each night I drew for one hour following the Fartlek´s steps. The result was more than eight hundred drawings, of which four hundred are inside of this book.

¨Cars, bikes, architecture, basketball, landscapes of La Mancha, still lifes and palpitating, gummy creatures as seen in a dream. All themes are essential, everything's reaching boiling point in his head, but the main subject here is drawing. These four hundred pages show an artist in his plenitude, taking the plunge of destroying his neatness and his advantage, both the calm and the inner tension of his technique, breaking the style itself. Just as a fartlek runner adapts his rate and beats to the varying context of the ground, letting his own instinct rule the land, José leaves his hand's own stream not even noticing it passed by his cerebral cortex first. Fartlek is José Ja Ja Ja's true calligraphy.¨

Published in a limited print run of 300, every copy includes an original panel of Gösta Olander's life in Volodalen, chronicled by José Ja Ja Ja in 300 different & consecutive panels, each signed and numbered in Madrid, in March 2016.

Published by Fulgencio Pimentel and Ruja Press. 2016

Press: IT'S NICE THAT

" Despite recent developments in 3D digital image-making, the line is still the shortest distance between two ideas, and José's book is full of them. Lines, that is: straight ones, curved ones, short ones and long ones. No color, no shading –just lines. There are naughty lines and charming lines, athletic lines and sexy lines, slow lines and speedy lines. All of these lines, minimal as they are, delineate a living and breathing, maximal world. "         - Steven Guarnaccia