CURATOR Conchi Alvarez
Remember and tell what happened during a dream, revive the dream, is an inexhaustible source of creativity for the artist, and a challenge, as in everything that belongs to the world of the psyche. When the imaginary and the irrational become images, everything is possible (“dreams are dreams”, as Calderon said), there is total freedom, and hence the attraction that the surreal and subconscious holds on the public. At other times, the artist prefers to control that imaginary world, as a daydream, dream while awake. The artist paints ideas, abstract concepts, within figuration, as an arduous undertaking that passes through the systematic use of symbolism being, hence, suggestions and evocations that take over the canvases and boards. Four artists who have exhibited at STOA since the opening of the gallery, four ways to capture the dream, four ways to imagine, four strong personalities, with their own style, are part of this exhibition until the 11th of December.
ALLAN NEFF
Multidisciplinary artist born in USA, studied in Canada, and currently residing in Spain. In this exhibition there are works of art from his series “Adam and Eve”, paintings in acrylic on canvas or burlap where the pictorial matter takes corporeality based on multiple glazes, forming as pictorial reliefs. A figurative work where the line dominates the space, boosting volumes and defining forms. This results in impressive compositions of closed atmosphere, which prevents any distraction from it. Sharp lines and saturated, powerful, pure colors, with little mixing. In “Distressed trees in Eden”, he updates the genre of the dreamscape with anthropomorphic forms shaken by the effect of great sin, the first of all. The foliage turns red, the logs cimbrea and moan as mourners and their roots try to cling to the soil becoming a marshy aquifer that the artist interprets as premonitory of the Great Universal Flood. In the other work, “The Word”, it is even more striking Allan’s predilection for allegory. Here, The Word, is the sword wielding an angelic being, provided with a huge flaming wings. Allan imagines the Guardian of Eden, after the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. A galactic figure in extreme close-up, with an expansive movement consistent with the catastrophe that caused the transgression.
JUAN MANUEL ALVAREZ CEBRIAN
Careful and refined technique in the works of art of this artist, great drawer and painter. His works stand out for the exquisite attention to detail. His is a content surrealism, with an order, with few licenses to debauchery, dreamed in calm and harmony and links, smoothly, with the imagined works, paintings of soft, sweet and elegant daydreams in which, sometimes, he plays with symbols, signs and beautiful codes, making works of art that invite the viewers to penetrate in them to unravel thousand of enigmas. The themes of his works range from everyday reality seen from his very personal prism, as in “No Title II”, a family library where the viewer can personalize and interact giving names and titles, to the classical mythology of “Leda and the Swan”, until “Dream”. The color in his works has that ancient glaze of the great masters, creating an atmosphere of centuries-old, timeless works of art, that are forever… achieving a subtle magical realism, calm, even dull.
SOLEDAD PULGAR
If there is a work of art that can synthesize the theme of this exhibition, it is undoubtedly “Who watches the interior of the dreams?”. A triptych in which the artist conveys the deep unease that is present sometimes in the subconscious. The provision of a figure in each canvas gives the possibility to “play” with the work of art, resulting in different stories depending on the location of each fabric. Neutral figures, lacking gender, souls of a purgatory in flames, boiler of creations of the worst nightmares. The composition is very classical, with a nod to Velazquez of the lateral opening of a vain that provides the only light in the room, nevertheless, bathed in a suffocating purple atmosphere.
PAZ AYMERICH
She is the painter of mysterious and enigmatic cities that achieve the immediate attraction in the viewer who, almost immediately, makes them theirs. Views, streets and corners where the dab or brushstroke, in a quick execution, dematerialize backgrounds, detailing tiles that, juxtaposed, are authentic mosaics. That inspiring feeling that placed her before the board or canvas with determination, results in an urban vision that shamelessly bared her soul and her inner world. Her cities reflect a beautiful and quiet vision of the great city, where you can feel the human beat, its essence, almost its interior bustle, but there is nobody visible. It is a customized world in which each viewer, almost every gaze envisions an ideal city. They are snapshots, feelings, emotions of a moment… or maybe a lifetime, outlined so that every glance finishes it.