SPIRITS AND COLORS
WHAT LIGHT CHOOSES TO SHOW US

INTRODUCTION IN THE ATMOSPHERE:
IN SEARCH OF THE LOST HUMANITY


What I tried to show through these latest works reflects, in some way, my personal worries about the world we live in and the needs that humanity has in this century. Contemporary art, in the past 20 years, has the tendency to repeat itself, and I consider that it reached a point of an empty carcass. If in the 80’s there was a need of an Andy Warhol to illustrate the state of being of society then, I believe that it’s now the time to reflect strongly about the role art should have HERE and NOW, because humanity has reached a point in which the excess of communication is at its peak, transforming us intro receptors of hundreds of gigabits of information that we receive on a daily basis, willing or non-willing, and we’re not capable of processing all this data or emit valid communicational channels towards our friends. We lead a more and more virtual existence in which communication has been reduced to the scarce vocabulary dictated by our computers. What do we have left? Do we really want an eclectic art, in which to descifre the meanings we need to read hundreds more of footnotes?
I consider that art in this century should offer solutions for the needs humanity has HERE and NOW. Art should remind people of what it means to feel a color, to vibrate along with it, to re-teach people how to feel. I painted landscapes because I consider that people need these colors, beauty , aesthetics, just like Picasso painted sausages during war because people were hungry, because I consider that people need to re-experience what light allows us to see: colors that give the spirit a state of exaltation and thankfulness that they are allowed to live and feel these emotions. I searched for the spirit of places, I tried to listen to these spirits speak to us, I searched for the metaphysics given by the carnation of a nude woman. In a way, we speak of a return to primitive, archaic emotions of the human being, of a return to the magic of places, to the transformations the human spirit suffers in contact with it. These are invariable and people need these emotions in order to feel a whole, in no matter what century we lead our existence. I consider these works to be contemporary art because they offer solutions to viewer and speak TO the era we live in , and not ABOUT it.

Mount Saint-Denis (Cezanne in flames)

This work speaks about the breaking of an equilibrium that is happening now. Cezanne is to me a symbol of what it means to truly feel and transpose nature, his profound archaic humanity is reflected in his work through the technique he chose to use, through the language he spoke in his paintings. I chose to reproduce the shape of mount Sain-Denis from the Cezanne painting and light it on fire in order to alert people of the dangers of this losing what’s left of our humanity through the informational excess. At least art should do something about this, because, as we all know, now more than ever, people need art in a way they maybe never needed it before. Gauguin too used to speak of this return to archaic emotions, of what’s real and unchangeable about the human being, undressed of the artificial civilization , and so did Brâncuşi. These people were far ahead of their times and perhaps it’s time to start thinking that they were speaking to us, the NOW society.

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