Exhibition held at the Marcos Valcárcel Cultural Center in Ourense.
There are two reasons why this exhibition is special. One because it is in my city and another because I love to exhibit at Marcos Valcárcel.
To say that art is, among many other things, an expression of the artist's feelings is so obvious, it is cliché. But, when this facet is deliberately sought, it is no longer so to become a whole program. It is about deconstructing the art of a multitude of additions and keeping its primary function as an element of intimate expression.
The preparation of this exhibition underwent a metamorphosis in full swing, from being works with meaning in themselves, I moved to small installations. Both projects will coexist sharing the exhibition space.
I will first talk about these montages that, although later in their elaboration, are more novel to me.
The "Myth of Pygmalion and Galatea", narrated by Ovid in his metamorphosis, has always been fascinating to me, perhaps because I see that desire to materialize feelings reflected in it. Pygmalion, a sculptor, creates a feminine work of such beauty that he falls in love with her and begs Aphrodite to give it life.
The works we create are a reflection of our wishes or memories reworked as we do with dreams. By objectifying them, by giving them corporeality beyond the evanescence of our mind, it allows us to face them in real life. This is a reflection of an emotional need, to understand ourselves.
Returning to the Pygmalion thread, in this case, my Pygmalion seems rather concerned or resigned than happy about the awakening of Galetea. Something like the myth of Frankenstein. Newborn Galatea, is delighted to wake up to life and begins stretching ... now the problems begin for Pygmalion and she reflects it with his resigned, expectant attitude.
The "Bath of Susana" is named in the bible, specifically in the book of Daniel. The caste Susana, is spied on during the bath by two old men, who by refusing to satisfy them as her waning eroticism demands of her, they accuse her of being immodest. It is a narrative that reflects some of our social behaviors, we accuse of what we want to obtain or destroy it.
In "The boastful" there is no literary apology, although it is by way of a traditional scene. The central character seems to tell what he is capable of doing with what his hands hide and his audience has different critical attitudes. It is a reflection on the difficulties in communication. We try to convey an idea and its understanding is random, since it depends on the feelings of the listener. These information mismatches are common in our experience. Life in society is based on this need to make our ideas understandable to others, in general to get them to join us for an end.
"Memories of other times" arises from the memory of my years of "military". Submitting to the authority of others is always emasculating, although our social achievements can make it look positive. Civilization could not possibly exist without the coordination of individual efforts for goals that exceed our possibilities, but they are collectively achievable. Although in most daily situations it is still a personal fraud to postpone our needs for a siren song.
As for the rest of the works, you could divide them according to different criteria.
We will start with the "fat" figures. I actually envision them as mountains. They look real but they are condensed images like those in dreams. From our sleeper point of view, the images in our mind are perfectly real and logical. From the waking perspective, we recognize these innocent images formed by a multitude of different personal experiences, it is often fascinating to try to decipher this language code between our emotions and our reason.
Something like this happens with these works and we doubt, for example, if they are men, women, young or old, in reality it is a mixture of everything at once like any obsessive image. Despite being vital, they are not without great architectural rigor.
From another perspective, they are a kind of mother goddesses, mountain spirits, something telluric reflection of my childhood landscape. Apart from the obvious human appearance, generally female, they evoke a certain orography that varies its format according to the different periods in which I made them. They were changing from explosive shapes to rectangular, quadrangular or totally folded formats. It is still curious that something apparently so simple (a person changing position) exerts this fascination on me for so many years and I always approach it as a new formal problem.
I am struck by how obsessive some ideas are in the work of many creators, no matter the specialty, novelists, painters, sculptors, filmmakers ... Each author always falls back on the same very specific theme and spends his life wanting to unravel
