Juan Ugalde
08 Apr - 08 May 2010
JUAN UGALDE
La cosa es muy otra
April 8 - May 8, 2010
THINGS ARE QUITE DIFFERENT
It is difficult to give up painting, like tobacco. They are games of images in which reality and fiction are mixed together. I try to blend both the visual with the tactile in my work.
I am interested in nearly all the painting from previous times (let us say, since the Romans). From the classics I like the Flemish artists and Quattrocentists, and especially Giovanni Bellini. I also enjoy the idea of mixing realities from different periods, including that of science fiction. The process is not a harmonious and serene one, but rather one full of starts, disagreements and surprises. One that is determined to happen.
The theme of people in landscape is repeated over and over again. I have used here photos from family albums, Internet, old books and some from El Escorial or from trips. I have also added printed fabrics and silkscreen textures. This is repeated in the history of art, although I suppose, that in the pictorial sequence of reality-unreality we are in a moment of new and surprising realities that are more or less unreal. Halfway between derangement and ecstasy, whilst the physical environment becomes devalued and the bustle goes on. I sometimes wonder how Zappa, or even a Lama would paint, stuck inside my studio.
In “Freud” I began by copying the orange squeezer that, little by little, transformed itself. A sort of city with a drainage system appeared, and Freud (I didn’t know it was him) with different bodies appears observing the flowers.
The buildings from the background in “Out of this bar” are done in silkscreen printing from a photo that I took in Berlin, in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood. The other elements are like a fantasy both nearby and at the same time far away from the surroundings. In this sense I am interested in the mixture of sanding in the background, the holes and the coloured triangles.
“Anillo de diamentes” (Diamond ring) began with a photo that I painted in a realistic way of a woman who was lying down in the boulevard next to the Pompidou Centre in Paris. After I rubbed nearly all of it out and after various more or less psychedelic transformations the space emerged with a chair and an astronaut. Right towards the end I added some silhouettes of people and a couple of big, strong men that are hardly noticeable. The blue shine that I have already used in other paintings, contrasts with the dirt from the black sky.
“Meeting Point” is a painting that has taken many turns in verticality; and in a way it continues to do so; the brown glaze connects with the desolate landscape facing the white colours from the sky and the buildings. Meanwhile the people remain with an absent expression about them, as if something were about to crack.
In “World windows” I began with an office desk from the fifties and connected it directly through the landscape with three rowers from a photo which I had taken when they were out rowing in the bay of Pasajes.
“Domestico con flores” (Housework with flowers) is more brutal in so far as the combination of impossible realities by means of the blending of silkscreen printing and collage, it is also, for me, perhaps one of my most interesting works.
With the series of small paintings, even though they were complicated, I have the feeling that they almost painted themselves. They are, of course, more casual and surprising.
JUAN UGALDE
La cosa es muy otra
April 8 - May 8, 2010
THINGS ARE QUITE DIFFERENT
It is difficult to give up painting, like tobacco. They are games of images in which reality and fiction are mixed together. I try to blend both the visual with the tactile in my work.
I am interested in nearly all the painting from previous times (let us say, since the Romans). From the classics I like the Flemish artists and Quattrocentists, and especially Giovanni Bellini. I also enjoy the idea of mixing realities from different periods, including that of science fiction. The process is not a harmonious and serene one, but rather one full of starts, disagreements and surprises. One that is determined to happen.
The theme of people in landscape is repeated over and over again. I have used here photos from family albums, Internet, old books and some from El Escorial or from trips. I have also added printed fabrics and silkscreen textures. This is repeated in the history of art, although I suppose, that in the pictorial sequence of reality-unreality we are in a moment of new and surprising realities that are more or less unreal. Halfway between derangement and ecstasy, whilst the physical environment becomes devalued and the bustle goes on. I sometimes wonder how Zappa, or even a Lama would paint, stuck inside my studio.
In “Freud” I began by copying the orange squeezer that, little by little, transformed itself. A sort of city with a drainage system appeared, and Freud (I didn’t know it was him) with different bodies appears observing the flowers.
The buildings from the background in “Out of this bar” are done in silkscreen printing from a photo that I took in Berlin, in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood. The other elements are like a fantasy both nearby and at the same time far away from the surroundings. In this sense I am interested in the mixture of sanding in the background, the holes and the coloured triangles.
“Anillo de diamentes” (Diamond ring) began with a photo that I painted in a realistic way of a woman who was lying down in the boulevard next to the Pompidou Centre in Paris. After I rubbed nearly all of it out and after various more or less psychedelic transformations the space emerged with a chair and an astronaut. Right towards the end I added some silhouettes of people and a couple of big, strong men that are hardly noticeable. The blue shine that I have already used in other paintings, contrasts with the dirt from the black sky.
“Meeting Point” is a painting that has taken many turns in verticality; and in a way it continues to do so; the brown glaze connects with the desolate landscape facing the white colours from the sky and the buildings. Meanwhile the people remain with an absent expression about them, as if something were about to crack.
In “World windows” I began with an office desk from the fifties and connected it directly through the landscape with three rowers from a photo which I had taken when they were out rowing in the bay of Pasajes.
“Domestico con flores” (Housework with flowers) is more brutal in so far as the combination of impossible realities by means of the blending of silkscreen printing and collage, it is also, for me, perhaps one of my most interesting works.
With the series of small paintings, even though they were complicated, I have the feeling that they almost painted themselves. They are, of course, more casual and surprising.
JUAN UGALDE