Manuel Larralde
Carácter Profético
September 5 to October 3, 2018
Curatorial text
Jorge Luis Borges used to say “We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of inconstant shapes, that pile of broken mirrors”.
I have the need to reconstruct a story, perhaps to understand it or to open a new question, I use images and stories from the past to better understand my personal and collective memory.
In my work I explore ideas about time, history and religion. Topics that have shaped me and that still constitute and interest me today.
What I propose is to continue experimenting with painting as a medium, and highlighting its properties and qualities that are exclusively plastic, and that make it unique beyond any new technology, maintaining the purity and tradition of painting itself, but generating a new image, where tradition, especially the baroque, and ordinary elements of this new technological era are mixed.
In this particular work I am working with a theme based on the bible, on the saints, martyrs, demons, Jesus, the Virgin and the angels, where I confront them, bring them together, bring them to the present, and mix them with characters and settings new, with the idea of giving them validity, of treating them with humor, irony, and compassion. New demons haunt us, new snakes try to get us out of the Garden of Eden, but new technologies (social networks) testify to it, multiply it, bounce it, and this is where the voice runs, where the image spreads and where the end of times seem to speed up.
Beyond some clear and identifiable characters such as Jesus or the Virgin, new characters also appear, somewhat monstrous and tender, others ambiguous, in whose situations there are elements of chaos, terror and power, but that go beyond religion. Christianity in particular, and they show a world in danger, a world of attacks. The fight of good and evil continues eternally, camouflaged in new names, religions or societies. My painting dives into this simultaneity of times, where the apocalypse seems to be reborn over and over again.
