ABRAHAM LACALLE ‘War painting’

Abraham Lacalle (Almería, 1962) unfolds different artistic possibilities in search of his personal path within the restrictive rules of the game of pictorial language.

The artist’s work starts with his early Cárceles (Jails), which serve as «solitary confinement cells» where painting is imprisoned. Then it opens into dynamic wooded Paisajes (Landscapes), where a still Utopian eco-systemic awareness comes to light. Eventually, it turns into the present Campos de batalla (Battle Fields). Here, painting –which happens and narrates– is itself a battle and a remnant of the battle, and ceases to be a scene to become a setting, the end of the disagreement, a discovery.

In the artist’s newest works, his explorations in the exercise of pictorial language have progressed from Un lugar donde nunca sucede nada (A place where nothing ever happens) to the «place where the most dreadful events occur». Here, the decadence generated by the pugnacity of human violence becomes a geographic landmark: the experience of death, loneliness and devastation.

In these works, Lacalle reverses the trend in his way of painting: before, he had always kept a safe distance –as is said in the hunting practice of the distance between beast and prey–. Then he started to go deep into the work, as a photojournalist getting into a hot zone in a dangerous territory.

Abraham has learnt all the mysteries of pictorial language, since he perfectly manages the promiscuous and ambiguous borders between figurative and abstract art (modern and post-modern), which makes him a legitimate artist of his time. Now that he has come out well of all his battles, he settles his own new rules of the game for a dialogue with an overwhelming present where images (and imaginaries) infest everything. Abraham’s work appears, then, as a distinguished visual poetics that casts its planimetric damages against the white wall of the institution of art, turning it into a symbolic confrontation zone.

This is a place where Painting tacitly becomes a gratifying truth by reminding us that we are alive due to its ability to activate our senses and our memory. And to find a privileged place for our emotions, which now (excited almost to fever pitch)… vibrate.

Omar-Pascual Castillo
Curator

IMAGE GALLERIES

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