Alejandro Gómez Cangas

Portrait No 9 / Retrato No 9

Painting - 2017
Unique
Oil on Canvas
111 x 120 cm
5,000 CHF
Artwork Statement

The real and the unreal, the concrete and the abstract are confusing dualities. An abstraction does not cease to be a real object, and a realistic painting is, seen at close range, a tricky mixture of matter, brushstrokes and texture that bring it closer to plastic abstraction. From a distance these concretions seek, on a first level of observation, an abstract image and provoke in the viewer an active approach in relation to the work, which he gradually discovers of what and of whom the multitude is composed. As a parable to the relation mass - individuality and the absorption to which the individual is subjected when it comes together in a crowd. The mass is not presented as something anonymous or impersonal but as a compound, abounds in details, ambitions a few minutes of contemplation. The diversity of people then becomes a point of attention, repair each individual, stop the gaze.
As a social portrait, I try to capture the most dissimilar individuals, the common man portrayed in his ordinary journey and recontextualized in a crowd. The idea is to analyze, at the level of an anthropology of the street, the large-scale mass phenomenon. They are images taken randomly and individually that I then upload, organize, compose in an extensive collage that outlines what will happen on the final canvas. Whimsical and forced scenes are evidenced in the compositions, the chopped and zenithal angles come to give us the chance to get out for a moment, to be surprised and to observe ourselves from a distance.