Uruguay/Argentina residency
Year 2019
Title Division of a painting space according to the local symbology
Mural made in Montevideo, during a two-weeks residency between Uruguay and Argentina with Associazione Ottovolante.
The piece is conceptually based on a defining element of Montevideo and, more generally, Uruguay –the patronage of St. Philip– as a link to the people's customs of the geographical area in which the mural is located.
The straight line passing through the hand is in fact a subtle reference to the horizontality of St. Philip's cross, which is traditionally depicted sideways, contrary to the common vertical representation of the cross symbol.
As if the patron would lay a marking element into the composition, separating foreground and background of the very same picture of which he is part, such pure graphic element, a line, is set to cover the horizon point between the frontal plain surface below the hand and the background, generating a duality of feelings: on one hand acting as a neat spacial division of a picture; on the other hand, seeming to somehow disrupt the boundaries between front and back as known in figurative painting, resulting in a declaration of "art as art" (or better "painting as art"), embracing the mural's bidimensional defining trait despite the attempt of capturing real life that lies beneath the traditional ideals of figuration.
Year 2019
Title Ouroboros V: Semi-brutal
Indoor mural at University of Mar del Plata, Argentina.
Inspired by the shapes of brutalist architecture, a free approach on depicting hands and their structural lines and shapes, as an attempt to push the boundaries between figuration and abstractism.
